A Song of Sixpence

  ‘I’d have known you anywhere, Laurence,’ he said amiably, making a sign that I should sit beside him. ‘As a matter of fact, despite your elongation, you haven’t really changed one iota.’

  Dubious as to whether this was complimentary or disparaging, I accepted his invitation and sat down. He continued to inspect me.

  ‘Were you walking for pleasure or for profit?’

  I had a wild and frantic desire to reveal myself, to tell him about Nora and of the splendour that had gloriously changed my life. Fortunately I was now sufficiently sane to restrain the impulse.

  ‘Actually for neither reason, sir. I was on my way back to Argyle Street.’

  ‘Why Argyle Street, of all places?’

  ‘That’s where I work.’

  ‘Work? In what capacity?’

  ‘Well, sir, I’m a sort of apprentice in a wholesale warehouse.’

  ‘You mean that you have left school?’ When I nodded he looked at me quizzically and murmured: ‘Then we are in the same boat.’

  ‘Have you retired, sir?’ I asked tactfully.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said. ‘I have, in fact, been pensioned off. But I am still active, thank God, in a personal and particularly interesting way. I am compiling the Annals of Ardencaple parish, Laurence. I have access to all the records in the University Library, and as I now occupy a quiet, decent room in Hillside Street quite near, I have every facility for what one might well term a labour of love.’

  He was still the same mild, prosy little man, characteristically making the best of his present situation, which did not strike me as particularly entrancing, and with my mind too over charged to allow me to appreciate our meeting properly, I had begun to seek some means of escape when he said:

  ‘Now tell me about yourself.’

  With some reluctance I set off on a bare outline of the events since my father’s death, of which he had heard. But he would not permit this brevity and kept drawing me out, pressing for more information, interspersing my answers with barely suppressed exclamations of interest and regret, until he had squeezed me dry of my entire history.

  When I had done, having eventually warmed to my subject, I looked for some expression of sympathy by way of reward. Instead, with his head cocked at a sharp angle, he began to tug at his little pointed grey beard. Finally, in an absent manner, he said:

  ‘And your poor mother was such a douce, happy little body.’ Then, before I could recover from the shock of this remark which, from Pin, seemed almost indecent, he glanced at me then away again in a manner which made me feel he was bringing himself to say something unpleasant. ‘I’m bitterly disappointed in you, Laurence. I thought you were a bright boy. I never imagined I’d find you clerking in a city warehouse.’

  ‘But how could I help myself?’ I protested.

  ‘In a dozen different ways. Most of all by showing some gumption. You want to go up there, don’t you?’ He cocked the little beard upwards, not of course suggesting that heaven was my destination, but in the more immediate direction of the University which, from our position by the river, towered on the hill above us.

  ‘I’ve wanted to go in for science, or even medicine, for long enough,’ I answered shortly. ‘I’ve wanted a lot of things I never got.’

  ‘Then why don’t you try a little harder? There are scores of University bursaries, especially in classics, open to clever boys. You are clever, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope I am.’

  ‘Then let’s see, right away, how we stand.’ He spoke with enthusiasm and, while I gazed wonderingly, fumbled in the inside pocket of his braided jacket and produed a thin, black, worn morocco booklet, rather like my prayer book.

  ‘This is my New Testament, Laurence,’ he said briskly. ‘Just open it at random and construe.’

  I opened at random then, after a blank pause, attempted a feeble joke.

  ‘This is Greek to me, sir. I don’t know a word of it.’

  ‘What, no Greek? Oh, dear, that’s a blow!’ He paused, frowning at me. ‘ Then how are you in Latin?’

  ‘I’ve gone through Selections from Ovid, and all of a book called Pro Patria, and, well, I sort of started a bit of Virgil.’

  ‘Started a bit of Virgil,’ he repeated, making a clicking noise with his dentures which appeared to express the ultimate in dissatisfaction.

  Again there was a silence. Then he said:

  ‘Define the fifth proposition of the third book of Euclid.’

  Hot with embarrassment, I faltered: ‘Afraid I haven’t been taken beyond the second book.’

  Even then he did not give up. There, on that park bench, while the perambulators rolled past and a park attendant watched suspiciously as though we were conspiring to pillage his flowerbeds, Pin put me through a comprehensive examination and when it was over he gave out a kind of hollow groan.

  ‘Who has been teaching you? Or ruining you?’ He tugged at the straggle of beard as though trying to uproot it. ‘You are utterly and completely uneducated.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said angrily. ‘I know lots of things about botany and zoology, perhaps more than you do, sir. I’ll bet you can’t tell the difference between the four different species of Erica, or how the chromosomes fission in an amoeba’s nucleus.’

  He considered me with a wan, compassionate smile.

  ‘My poor boy, these are precisely the subjects you would take, and doubtless excel in, after your admission to a scientific curriculum. But to gain that admission you require knowledge of a totally different kind, a standard textbook proficiency, which you simply have not got.’

  There was nothing I could say to this. Suddenly I looked up.

  ‘Couldn’t you … I mean, as we’re both in Winton … couldn’t you coach me, sir …?’

  At once, and with fatal certainty, he shook his head.

  ‘Impossible, Laurence. You’re so far behind you need at least two years’ hard and constant study. I’ll not be here more than six months. On your side and mine it would be hopeless.’

  A long dull unhappy silence followed this extinction of my one sustaining hope, always at the back of my mind, that I would somehow break through my difficulties to a brilliant, scintillating career.

  ‘It’s a great pity, Laurence. You were such a promising pupil. Don’t you remember those little sagas you produced for me when I set the week-end essays? They were uncommonly good. You had such an unaccountable sense of words. I used to read them to the class.’ He paused suddenly, reflectively, looking at me in a manner which struck me as odd. He murmured a word, to himself, which came to me indistinctly. It sounded like elison. Was it a final benediction? Then, rather undecidedly, he said: ‘I suppose there’s no harm in our keeping in touch. Have you a pencil? Take down my address. Two-twelve Hillside Street. You might come and see me one evening next week. And now I mustn’t keep you. I’ll walk down with you to the tram stop.’

  I answered sulkily. ‘I don’t take the tram.’

  ‘But I have to, Laurence,’ he said mildly.

  We walked together to the Park gates. His progress, conspicuously slow and more ungainly than before, attracted curious and often vulgar stares. On the inclines he was audibly short of breath. In a bad, sullen mood it did not please me to be publicly identified with him, to be an adjunct to this freakish, hobbling progress. He had not helped me in the least, but had merely cast me down. When, at last, he hoisted himself to the step of the tram and called, ‘Mind now. Come early next week,’ I barely answered before abruptly turning away.

  At least he had not robbed me of all my future. I still had Nora. And as I went on towards Argyle Street I began to think of her again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The second ‘house’ of the Alhambra opened at nine o’clock, but on Saturday night, as could be expected, I arrived outside the entrance to the stalls well before that hour. I was in fact so early that the outrush of the audience from the first performance almost swept me off my feet. There
after, a cold wind blowing fog from the river made standing a chilly business. With an eye on the Central Station clock I paced up and down, warming myself, less with this activity than with the prospect of seeing Nora. But time was going on. Ten, five, three minutes to nine … now the curtain must be going up. I began to worry. Had I mistaken the date, or come to the wrong door? Fifteen minutes late, as I was on the point of leaving, they arrived.

  The party was larger than I expected: Terence and Miss Josephine Gilhooley, Nora, Miss Donohue, and a hard-looking young man in an expensive suit who turned out to be Miss Donohue’s brother. They were all in a mood of combined and well-established gaiety which induced the belief that they had probably had dinner together. The suspicion that I had been excluded from this prior event was confirmed by the effusiveness with which, by way of compensation, they greeted me.

  ‘I do hope you haven’t caught cold, dear,’ Miss Donohue exclaimed, clutching my arm.

  ‘Just had to step in and see a dog about a man,’ Terence explained. ‘Josey, this is Laurence.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. I always say that any friend of my friend’s is a friend of mine, only they ought to have told me about you sooner.’ Miss Gilhooley, who was wearing a rich-looking fur coat and swathes of mauve tulle round her head and neck, joined in the attempt to make amends. She pressed my hand, leaving on my palm an imprint of perfume that persisted throughout the evening, and added: ‘I hear you’re a great runner. You look it too. I always say you can tell by the look.’

  ‘We think he might be good,’ Terence said judiciously. ‘Martin and I mean to give him a try-out one of these days.’

  So far Nora had not spoken. Now, though still silent, she smiled to me, a smile of recognition and acknowledgement, with, I thought, a hint of intimacy that more than made up for all my waiting. Better still, as we went into, the theatre she said quickly in my ear, explaining everything:

  ‘It was Miss Gilhooley’s party, Laurence. So I couldn’t very well invite you to the Criterion. But next time you’ll to be sure to come.’

  Unfortunately, in the disturbance created as we crushed our way into the centre of the stalls, I lost my place so that Terence, in the lead, sat with Miss Gilhooley, then came Martin with Nora, while I, at the end, was left with Miss Donohue. This arrangement did not at all suit me. In my disappointment, I looked along the row hoping for a commiserating glance from Nora, but with her usual animation she was talking to Donohue. On the stage a juggler was tossing balls in the air.

  ‘The opening turns are never much good, dear,’ Miss Donohue whispered in my ear. ‘But just wait till you see Hetty King.’ She had unwrapped a large box of chocolates and having offered me my choice placed the box conveniently open on her lap. ‘Help yourself when you feel like it, dear.’

  These repeated endearments from Miss Donohue, in which I detected a note of compassion, were making me feel like an orphan charity boy at a free treat. A man in a small bowler hat, with a red-painted nose, was now singing a song at which everyone seemed to be laughing but me.

  ‘He’s a scream, isn’t he, dear?’ Miss Donohue giggled.

  I forced my stiff features into a concurring smile, taking, at the same time, another glance along the row. Miss Gilhooley, lying back almost in hysterics and showing all her gold-filled teeth, was clutching at Terence for support. Then, with an inward sinking, I perceived that Martin was holding Nora’s hand. At first sight I had not liked Donohue, who had not spoken to me, merely favoured me with a cold hard look, and that impression was now strongly reinforced. He was too good-looking, in a raffish, morose, dangerous way. With his prominent cheekbones and slightly flattened nose he had the appearance of a boxer.

  ‘Look, dear, the Simultaneous Brothers.’

  Obliged to give some attention to the miming of these integrated twin-like figures, in flannels, striped blazers and straw hats, I nevertheless could not remove my troubled gaze from that other pair. The unnatural position thus maintained, with one eye on the stage and the other along the row, at last attracted the attention of Miss Donohue, who asked in an undertone:

  ‘Have you twisted your neck, dear, you seem to have a crick in it? Or don’t tell me you have a squint?’

  With an effort I returned my eyes to their normal focus and hastily reassured her that I didn’t need glasses.

  The fall of the curtain for the interval saved me. Terence and Donohue immediately rose to go out to the bar and, as Miss Gilhooley stretched across the intervening space to talk to Nora, I turned to Miss Donohue with rare determination.

  ‘I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your brother before, Miss Donohue,’ I remarked conversationally, with a painful attempt at subtlety. ‘Does he live in Winton?’

  ‘Well, part of the time, dear. But then he travels round the country a lot.’

  ‘On business, Miss Donohue?’

  ‘Naturally, dear. He’s a commission agent.’

  ‘Do you mean a commercial traveller, Miss Donohue?’

  She studied me commiseratingly.

  ‘You are green, aren’t you, dear? Still, I like you for it, you’re a very sweet boy. No, dear. Martin’s a bookmaker. Not making books to read, you understand. Taking bets. A bookie, if you’ve heard the word. He has a stand at most of the race meetings and is in the way of building up a fine connection. Have a chocolate, dear, one of these, I don’t like the caramel centres, they get in my dentures.’

  ‘It seemed to me, Miss Donohue, that he and Nora are pretty good friends.’

  ‘You might put it rather stronger than that, dear,’ she said, giving me a queer look. ‘There’s what you might call an understanding there.’

  ‘An understanding, Miss Donohue?’ I forced the words out from between my teeth.

  ‘They’re not exactly engaged, Nora’s too young yet, only seventeen you know, and I want to bring her on for a year or so, at Earle’s, so she can have her own business when she settles down. But take it from me, dear, already it’s a settled case.’

  That there was no engagement might have afforded me some solace but, while I did not precisely understand its meaning, the word ‘case’ had a fatal sound, made worse by the fact that it was settled. I gazed at Miss Donohue in silent misery as she went on.

  ‘Nora’s a lovely girl. A trifle wild maybe, it’s the Irish in her, too full of mischief. But a dear girl, I’m very fond of her.’

  ‘I’m sure we all are, Miss Donohue,’ I croaked, in a vain effort to save face.

  The rest of the show was dust and ashes in my mouth. Even Hetty King failed to stir me despite Miss Donohue’s impressive whisper that her hit number ‘ Oh, You Beautiful Doll’ was King Edward’s favourite song.

  As the final curtain fell and the orchestra bashed off a few bars of ‘ God Save the King’, I had a melancholy sensation of relief. In the general scurry Terence and Donohue hurried to the bar for a last quick drink, while the two ladies, with a conscious air, retired to Cloaks. At last I was alone with Nora, waiting in the emptying foyer. She came close to me, so that her eyes looked straight into mine. They were serious, yet her mouth, so mobile, so warm when it had pressed against my cheek, had a humorous twist.

  ‘You haven’t enjoyed yourself,’ she said accusingly, yet with a note of sympathy, as if to indicate that she understood me. Indeed, when defensively I protested that I had, she shook her head. ‘No. You thought it was pretty crude, and perhaps it was. This isn’t at all the kind of thing you like.’

  I felt, then, in sudden desperation, that I must unburden myself.

  ‘I would have liked it, Nora, if I’d been sitting with you.’

  ‘Then why weren’t you?’ She widened her eyes. Her breath, as she stood close to me, was warm and sweet. ‘It would have been nice.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to sit with Martin.’

  ‘Martin!’ she exclaimed. ‘I get enough of him. He’s much too pressing. I was wanting you to be beside me.’

  My heart gave an enormous, joyful boun
d. Freed of my load of misery, I felt the blood run into my face.

  ‘But, Laurence,’ she was looking at me provokingly, ‘Terry says you don’t care much about girls.’

  ‘I care about you, Nora. If you want to know, I’ve never cared about anyone the way I do you. I like you very much.’

  She smiled and I thought she would go on teasing me. But after a moment her expression changed, a soft look came into her blue-black eyes.

  ‘Well, I like you too,’ she said. ‘I really mean it. And I want to see a lot of you, show you around a bit, take you out of yourself. It’s a hard world, Laurence, and if you’ll forgive me, I think you could do with a little more experience of it. You’ve got to learn to mix with people and to have a bit of fun now and then. Am I offending you by saying all this?’

  ‘No, you’re not, Nora.’

  The others were approaching, and she went on rather quietly.

  ‘Then I tell you what. Next Sunday Mart and Terry are going to be away. So you come up to Park Crescent and we’ll do exactly what you want.’

  ‘Oh, Nora,’ I breathed. ‘How perfectly wonderful. Shall I come in the morning?’

  I thought she was going to laugh. Her lips twitched and her eyes, under those curling lashes, screwed up into sparkling black slits.

  ‘Come when you’re ready,’ she said. ‘ But not too early or you’ll find me in bed.’

  I was alive again, quite ready to smile when the others reappeared and pretend gaily that I’d had a wonderful time, to exchange hearty goodbyes and thank Miss Gilhooley when she said she wanted me to come to her next party, all of which was a performance completely foreign to my nature but which I now accomplished because I knew that Nora truly cared for me.

  When at last I left them, I walked on air all the way back to Templar’s Hall and the clanging of the trams made music in my ears.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Apart from my mother’s regular weekly letters, I had nothing to expect from the mail. The postcard which arrived by the morning delivery on the following Wednesday and was handed to me at breakfast by Mrs Tobin was therefore a surprising event. It came from Pin, and it said briefly: