Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

Jenny was delighted that David had made such a good impression at the Law, delighted that he had become “so friendly with the Barrases.” Jenny’s desire for society was such that it pleased her even to take it by proxy. When he came back at night she would urge David to tell her all that had happened: now did she really say that, and did they hand the biscuits round or just leave the barrel on the tray? That Hilda might have an interest in David did not worry her in the least. She had no jealousy, she was “dead sure” of David, and in any case Hilda was the dowdiest thing.

Jenny’s reactions to the Law amused David, often he invented the most elaborate incidents to tease her. But Jenny was not so easily taken in. Jenny, in her own words, had a head on her shoulders. Jenny was Jenny.

David, all this time, was becoming acquainted with Jenny. It often struck him as strange that he should only now be getting to know his own wife, but it was not so strange when he reflected that he certainly had not known her before her marriage. Then Jenny had been the projection of his love, a flower, a sweetness, the very breath of spring.

Now he began to know the real Jenny, the Jenny who wanted “society,” clothes, amusement, who liked “going about” and was fond of a glass of port, who was passionate yet easily shocked, who smilingly put up with big discomforts and cried over the little ones, who suddenly demanded love and sympathy and “petting,” who had a habit of flat contradiction with no argument to support it, who combined logic and wild unreason in the same sweet breath.

He still loved Jenny, he would never stop loving her, he knew. But they started now to have frequent and violent quarrels. Jenny was stubborn and he was stubborn. And there were certain things in which Jenny must not have her way. He would not have her drinking port. On the night when she had ordered herself a port in the Percy Grill he had felt that Jenny was too fond of port. He would not let her have port in the house. They fought over that port: “You’re a killjoy right enough… you ought to join the Salvation Army… I hate you. I hate you…” Then would come a burst of tears, a big reconciliation and love. “Oh, I do love you, David, I do, I do …”

They fought over David’s examination as well. She wanted him to take his B.A., of course. She was mad that he should take it, she would like to spite that Mrs. Strother and a few of them But she simply would not give him time to study. There was always something for them to do at nights, or if they were alone it was a case, very pathetically, of: “Take me on your knee, David darling, it seems ages since I had the littlest bit of petting.” Or perhaps she had given herself a tiny cut with the potato knife — lost such a lot of blood and when do you think we’ll have a maid, David? — and must have no one but him to bind it up. The B.A. receded at such moments. David had already put it back six months and it looked now, with this extra coaching at the Law, as though another six months would be added to the other. In desperation he took to cycling the fifteen miles to Wallington, the village where Carmichael now lived. In the school house he got peace and judicious advice: what best to go on with and what to leave alone. The disillusioned Carmichael was kind to him, really decent. Often he stayed the whole week-end with Carmichael.

And they fought finally, Jenny and he, about their families. It worried David terribly, the estrangement his marriage had brought about between his own family and himself. There was of course a certain coming and going between Inkerman Terrace and the house in Lamb Lane. But it was not what David wanted. Jenny was stiff, Martha cold, Robert silent, Sammy and Hugh uncomfortable. It was queer that when David saw Jenny, in all her patronising gentility, with his own family he could have beaten her and the moment they went out he felt himself loving her again. His marriage had been a shock, he realised, to Martha and Robert. Martha naturally received the blow with an air of bitter justification: Jenny wasn’t nearly good enough, she had always known harm would come of David’s coming out of the pit, and now this silly early marriage clearly proved her right.

Robert’s attitude was different. He retired into his silence. To Jenny he was always kind he went out of his way to be kind, but though he tried so hard to be encouraging there was a sadness about it all. He had been ambitious for David, he had built so much on all that he would do he had in a sense put his whole life into David’s future. And David at twenty-one had married a silly shop-girl — that, in his secret heart, was how Robert viewed it.

David felt his father’s sadness. It hurt him horribly. He lay awake at nights thinking about it. His father resented his marriage. His father resented his having applied to Barras for a job. His father resented his coaching of Arthur Barras at the Law. Yet his father had written and asked him to go fishing up the Wansbeck.

With a start David came back to himself. Rather guiltily he silenced his noisy class. Quickly, he wrote a short reply to his father’s note for Harry to take back. Then he flung himself into the work of the day.

All that week he looked forward to Saturday. He had always been, in the local phrase, “a great one for the fishing,” though his opportunities to fish had lately been so few. Spring was again in the air; he knew the Wansbeck valley would be lovely now; he suddenly longed to go there with all his soul.

Saturday came, a good fishing day, warm, with blinks of sun amongst the clouds and a soft westerly wind. He rose early, gave Jenny her morning cup of tea, prepared some jam sandwiches; then he had a look at the little greenheart rod his father had given him on his tenth birthday — how well he remembered going to Marriot’s in West Street to buy it. He tried the rod, it was still whippy and useful as ever. He put on his boots, whistling softly. Jenny was still in bed when he left the house.

He climbed the Terraces, along Inkerman — it gave him a queer feeling, this soft spring morning — into his own home. Sammy and Hughie were both working their shift, but his mother stood at the table tying up Robert’s picnic lunch with thin twine and greased paper. Martha saved twine and greased paper as though they were both fine gold. At the sight of him though she nodded her lips drew down ominously, he saw she had not forgiven him yet.

“Ye don’t look well,” she said, penetrating him with her bleak eyes.

“I feel perfectly well, mother.” It was not true; off and on he had been feeling seedy these last few months.

“Ye have a face white as a clout.”

He answered shortly:

“I can’t help my face. I tell you I feel all right.”

“I’m thinkin’ ye felt better when ye stopped in this house and worked decently in the pit.”

He felt his temper rise in him. But he said:

“Where’s my dad?”

“Gone out to get some grubs. He’ll be back presently. Are ye in such a hurry ye can’t sit down for a second and speak a word to your own mother?”

He sat down, watching her as she carefully tied the last tight bow — there were no knots in the string, for Martha wanted it back. She had aged little: her big solid body was still active, her movements sure, her deep-set eyes shrewd and masterful as ever in her gaunt healthy vigorous face. She turned:

“Where’s your lunch?”

“In my pocket.”

“Show me.”

He pretended not to hear.

She held out her hand; repeated:

“Show me.”

“I will not show you, mother. My lunch is in my pocket. It’s my lunch. I’m going to eat it. So that’s an end of it.”

She still kept out her hand, grimly, her expression unrelaxed. She said: