A Song of Sixpence (20 page)

This was the interest that truly sustained me during a period of dullness and uncertainty when I felt that I was getting nowhere. I realized that St Mary's could take me no further and that I was soon due to leave. Yet I dared not ask my mother what the future held for me. In her face now there was a reserve that forbade my question, an expression that I did not wish to read yet which instinctively I recognized as an omen contrary to all my hopes.

At first, through sympathy for her, and the general regard for Father, she had done well enough with the agency. But gradually the decline had set in, competition increased, and more and more she came back with a thinning order book and a set, harassed expression, the presage to increasing economies that dispelled the blessed ambience of security in which I had hitherto lived.

As the months went on it became more and more apparent how painfully short we were of money. Particularly in our diet was this stringency noticeable, for although worse was in store for me, Mother now concentrated on the cheapest and most nourishing foods, such things as baked beans, boiled salt codfish and cottage pie, which I accepted with an added sense of grievance, since it must now be revealed that those sustaining lunches with which Miss Greville had regaled my pampered stomach had practically ceased.

This, indeed, touched another of our problems, a mysterious enigma, surrounding my benefactress, that passed my present understanding. Miss Greville, caught up in new and unforeseen activities, was seldom in for lunch. When I came back from school at the midday recess, hoping against hope, I would be met in the hall by Campbell who, with a grim smile that made my heart sink, would remark: ‘Lunch is not being served today, Master Carroll.' She gave always to the ‘ Master' an imperceptible sardonic inflection that, intensifying my sense of deprivation, wounded me deeply as, my nostrils dilating to the good smells of Campbell's own lunch coming from the kitchen, I slowly went upstairs where, on the alcove table, I would find a pencilled note left by Mother:
Soup in the pot on the stove for you to heat, dear. And some cold rice pudding in the cupboard.

What, I asked myself repeatedly, was happening to Miss Greville? Towards Mother and myself she was more forthcoming, more gaily affectionate, than ever. Yet it seemed as though in this effusiveness Mother found something oppressive. At first she had been pleased to be invited to those little tea parties, and even to play and sing there. But now, returning tired and dispirited from Winton, she was apparently in no mood for such festivities, and only once during the previous six months when Miss Greville had entertained her few St Anne's friends to a musical evening had she attended, with reluctance, and then because she felt it in obligation to play, or at least to accompany Miss Greville's performance on the cello. After this event she had returned depressed and with a disinclination for further social intercourse. It was difficult to escape the conclusion that the more Miss Greville offered intimacy, the more my mother had withdrawn from it, not obtrusively, but rather with discretion, as though anxious to moderate these approaches. I particularly noticed this reserve in Mother's manner on Sundays when Miss Greville, sumptuously dressed for church in a high-waisted cream costume, an enormous exuberant hat on top of her chignon, a parasol in her white-gloved hands, and exuding a faint smell of Parma violets, came upstairs to be approved.

‘Does this suit me? Will I
do,
Grace? Am I fit to be seen?'

Envisaging that full, richly moulded figure, Mother repressively replied:

‘You will certainly be seen.'

‘I believe so.' Miss Greville smiled confidently. ‘And why not, dear Grace?'

Of course Miss Greville had always been an assiduous churchgoer, and her penchant for remarkable attire was no secret to me, yet in these over-elaborate Sunday toilettes there must surely be some meaning which so far had escaped me. Nevertheless I, as opposed to Mother, welcomed every sign and symptom, no matter how displayed, of Miss Greville's partiality. Not only did I admire her intensely—‘look up to her' is perhaps the better phrase—I knew all too well what she had done for me. And I dared to hope that she would do more. Indeed, her interest in me now seemed the only chance of bringing me what I most desired.

This thought was in my mind when one March day, as still occasionally happened, I was lucky enough to find Miss Greville at home. Lunch was being served. Rejoicing that I need not, for once, face up to cold rice pudding, I washed and brushed my hair with unusual care before entering the dining-room. She greeted me with a bright appraising smile. If sadness reigned in our part of the house, here surely the reverse held sway. Miss Greville, during these past deadly months, had been consistently animated.

‘You are presentable, Carroll,' she remarked approvingly, as I placed her chair. ‘Indeed, extremely so. Rather a different person from that scrubby little window-breaker of … how long ago?'

‘Four years, Miss Greville.'

I do not recall how our conversation developed after that promising opening. I do not doubt that it was interesting, since this remarkable woman had an extraordinary gift of stimulating and often bizarre talk and had even taught me to respond in a civilized manner and, apparently, with intelligence. Today, however, I was at first too busily engaged with some excellent roast beef to give her my complete attention. But of the ending of that lunch my memory is exact, my recollection unforgettably clear. She had proceeded to the window with her cup of coffee according to invariable habit, and after remaining rather longer than usual returned to the table in a mood which I rightly judged to be communicative.

‘You are remarkably discreet, Carroll,' she began, looking at me intently, yet amiably.

‘Am I, Miss Greville?'

‘And, thanks to me, well mannered. So often, during our moments of agreeable intimacy, you have observed me go to the window, yet never once have you chosen to inquire why.'

‘That would not have been polite.' Falling into her mood I mouthed this appalling answer like a well-behaved little prig. For that roast beef, with my eye on a second helping, I would have made myself a triple prig.

‘But you've been curious?' she pressed, unwilling to dismiss the subject. ‘Admit the soft impeachment.'

Scarcely knowing whether it would be to my advantage to admit or deny I eventually inclined my head soberly.

‘I
was
curious, Miss Greville.'

‘But you didn't guess?'

‘I imagined you were waiting for a friend, who passed here regularly every day.'

‘Well done, Carroll!'

She seemed so pleased at my deduction that my inveterate wish to shine drove me to continue.

‘And whoever it was would naturally see you there.'

She smiled.

‘It would be rather pointless if there were not an exchange of glances. The human eye, Carroll, as a means of communication is more expressive than the tongue. More subtle too, and truer. The tongue can lie, the eye, never. More beef?'

‘Please, Miss Greville.'

While I partook of another juicy slice she kept playing absently with her long chain necklace of ivory beads, that odd little smile coming and going on her lips.

‘You know Mr Lesly, of course. Our vicar at St Jude's.'

‘Why, certainly, Miss Greville. I often see him in the street. And you remember he stopped and spoke to us that first day we were coming back from Glen Fruin. The day we found the
morio.
'

‘Of course. You liked him?'

‘He seemed an awfully nice young man.'

‘Not nice, Carroll. Not that deplorable word. Charming, if you wish, intelligent, sympathetic, handsome. And not so young. He is coming to tea next Saturday. I want your mother to meet him.'

A considerable silence ensued. When I finished rolling my napkin and hopefully putting it in its silver ring for possible future use, she was gazing at me benignantly.

‘What age are you, Carroll?'

‘Thirteen, Miss Greville.'

‘As I was saying, you have improved. I regard you, in a manner of speaking, as my own creation. And I wish you to understand this. Whatever changes may be effected in the immediate future I mean to do something for you.'

All at once my heart came into my mouth. Did I interpret her meaning correctly or was I merely carried away by my own expectations? Surely asking how old I was had been significant. She had often said that fourteen was the proper age to … I did not dare ask, yet the longing in my soul made me falter out the words:

‘In the way, perhaps, of sending me to a decent school. Miss Greville?'

She made a spirited gesture of acquiescence.

‘What else, Carroll? A very good school,' Then quickly, seeing an idiotic wildness in my eye: ‘ No, not
there
, Carroll. You would not, I fear, be altogether comfortable in that establishment. You must go to one of your own persuasion.'

‘Rockcliff … perhaps … Miss Greville?'

‘Why should we send you to Ireland? If you insist on the Jesuits, you'll do better in Yorkshire at Amplehurst, which is not a bad little institution in its own way.'

Amplehurst! Beyond question the best Catholic public school. Stricken dumb, I gazed at her with glistening eyes.

That afternoon I could not be still, could not think of returning to imprison my bounding spirits in my malodorous Clay Street classroom. I simply played truant, put on an old pair of shorts and a jersey and went out for a long run in the rain. I liked to run and believed, with some justification, that I could run fast. Miss Greville had encouraged me to take these cross-country chases and, like the morning cold bath which I shiveringly endured, they had become not the expression of my devotion alone, but of the authority she exerted upon me in forming a régime, quite foreign to my nature, that I had now come to enjoy. As I flashed along the sodden by-ways, leaping the puddles as though each were a Beecher's Brook, I wished, though vainly, that I might encounter Scott-Hamilton to convey to him in that brief moment of transit the brilliant changes in my fortunes.

Mother was annoyed with me when I got back. She had returned by an earlier train and was at the stove making our supper.

‘Oh, Mother, not beans again!' I protested.

She looked at me coldly.

‘Where on earth have you been? And soaking wet, too.'

‘Don't be cross,' I told her expansively. ‘I'll go and change. Then, Mother dear, I have some rather interesting news for you.'

A few minutes later, when we were seated at our narrow table in the alcove, I related, with impressment, my conversation with Miss Greville. Mother, gazing over her cup, from time to time taking sips of tea, heard me in silence. But when, finally, or perhaps as a kind of postscript, I conveyed Miss Greville's invitation to her for Saturday, she gave a short disturbed exclamation.

‘Mr Lesly is to be there?'

‘Of course. Why are you so surprised? Don't you know that Miss Greville and he are great friends? Why, every day at lunch they smile at each other through the window.'

Mother made to speak, but checked herself and was silent. But her expression remained decidedly odd. This, and the manner in which she had received my announcement, offended me. I did not offer to wash the dishes and instead went into my own room.

What could be wrong between Miss Greville and Mr Lesly? It was painfully evident that Mother was upset by the idea of this invitation and had no wish to accept it. Naturally, I was not blind to Miss Greville's oddities. These, especially in the early stages of our relationship, had fascinated me. Her unusual personality awed and stimulated me so that I had come to regard her as a brilliant eccentric, and for this reason was prepared to accept her unconventional behaviour. But having her vicar to tea was not unconventional. Why, then, all this fuss? I should not have been at all surprised if she had asked someone like Buffalo Bill, or Harry Lauder, rather than the estimable Mr Lesly, the more so since, despite my pretence of ignorance, I had sensed that she valued him.

Nevertheless, when Saturday came a vague uneasiness creeping over my skin made me want to be out of the way that afternoon. It was fine, a good day for another run, I told myself, especially since the Harriers were out in a paper chase to Stair Head. These Harriers, made up of young men who were clerks, apprentices, shop assistants and the like, were now, more properly, my friends, and in the previous autumn I had established myself amongst them by winning the Junior Steeplechase open to boys under fourteen. After Mother had made me a scrambled egg on toast I slipped out of the house in my shorts and jersey. I was late. The meet had started at the edge of the Darvie Woods and soon I was amongst the pines following the paper trail that had been laid down. The excitement of picking up the track, losing it, then striking it again soon absorbed me. A thrill of pride shot through me as I overtook some of the club stragglers, and with my chin up and elbows pressed in, ignoring the stitch in my side, left them floundering behind. Yet the very merit of my speed proved my undoing. When, still trotting and spotted with mud, as the afternoon drew to a close, I swung into Prince Albert Terrace, I saw that I had misjudged my time. The door of No. 7 was open, revealing Miss Greville and my mother with Mr Lesly in the very act of leaving. He was a handsome, measured kind of man with an exact middle parting of his hair, who looked rather like an actor. But now he appeared flushed and terribly uncomfortable as he hurriedly shook hands, and he almost stumbled as he came down the porch steps. Contrary to his usual civil habit, he did not recognize me. Perhaps he did not see me. If ever a man seemed anxious to expedite his departure it was the Vicar of St Jude's.

I went into the house. Mother and Miss Greville were in the hall and, as I slipped past hurriedly, for somehow the situation appeared to have got out of control, Mother, in a low tone of remonstration, said something which I did not hear but to which Miss Greville replied, with a burst of joyful animation: