A Song of Sixpence (3 page)

When she called out ‘ Laurence Carroll' I imitated the others with a ‘Present, miss', which, however, was so uncertain as to suggest that I doubted my own identity. Nevertheless it was accepted, and after we had all given our names and Miss Grant had entered them in the big book on her desk she set us to work. The class was at different stages. Soon one section was droning out the two-times table, another copying sums from the blackboard on their slates, while a third struggled with block letters of the alphabet. To me all this appeared such manifest child's play that my earlier apprehension began to fade and to be replaced by a tingling consciousness of my own worth. What infants, not to know a
B
from a
D
! And who, amongst these older boys, had dipped, like me, into the mysteries of
Pears' Cyclopaedia
with the picture of the tramp on the frontis-piece announcing that for five years he had used no other soap? Surrounded by such evidence of juvenile ignorance, I felt the power of my superior knowledge, the distinction of my new clothes; I wanted to display my talents to shine.

The screech of the slate pencils had not long begun before the door was flung open and the command given.

‘Rise, children.'

As we clattered to our feet Pin appeared and deferentially ushered into the classroom a stiff, self-important, overdressed little woman with a bust so swelling and aggressive as to give her, in conjunction with the tuft of feathers on her hat, a marked resemblance to a pouter pigeon. I gazed at her in awe. Lady Meikle was the widow of a Winton corset manufacturer who, behind the blameless but intriguing slogan: ‘Ladies, we use only the finest natural whalebone', plastered on the hoardings of every railway station—an advertisement that to me ranked in interest equally with ‘The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley Pen, they come as a boon and a blessing to men'—had advanced to considerable wealth, then, after a long term as provost of Levenford, to a knighthood, a distinction that had induced him to purchase and retire to a large property in the vicinity of Ardencaple. Here he had leisure to indulge his hobby of cultivating orchids and tropical plants while his spouse lost no time in assuming the duties and asserting the prerogatives of the lady of the manor, although with her down-to-earth ways and lapses into broad Scots idiom she was not, and freely admitted this, to the manner born. Yet Lady Whalebone, as my father named her, was a decent woman, generous to Ardencaple—she had given the new village hall—and charitable to the entire county. She had moreover a characteristic grim sense of humour and a strong dash of sentiment, since besides giving her lamented husband a magnificent tombstone, replete with many awesome urns, she faithfully maintained and had indeed made famous the orchid collection he had instituted before his decease. Strange though it may appear, while I had never exchanged a word with so exalted a personage, I had good reason to be familiar with her estate in all its extent, with its woods and river, the avenue a mile long winding through the park between giant rhododendrons to the big house with its enormous adjacent conservatory.

‘Be seated, bairns.' She swept forward. ‘This room is unco' stuffy. Open a window.'

Miss Grant hurriedly complied while her ladyship, keeping a formidable eye upon us, conferred with Pin, who, bending forward, his deformed limb drawn back, half concealed behind the sound leg—a posture I soon saw to be habitual—made submissive murmurs of acquiescence. Then she addressed us, in the broadest Doric, beginning thus:

‘Bairns, ye're a' young and fushionless, but I hope and pray that so far ye have come to nae harm or tummelt into evil ways. Now ye a' ken the interest I take in the village and in a' of
you,
for what ye are, or may be, so see ye pay heed to what I'm about to say.'

She continued in this fashion at considerable length, exhorting us to work diligently, to improve ourselves and to maintain always the highest standards of good behaviour and moral conduct, implying that it would go hard with us here and in the hereafter if we did not. Her address completed, she pursed her lips and favoured us with a dignified yet half-humorous smile in which might have been detected a trace of slyness.

‘As yet ye ken nothing. Virgin soil, that's what ye are, virgin soil. But I am going to test your nat'ral intelligence to see if ye have any gumption or for that matter anything in your heads at a'. Miss Grant, a pencil.'

The pencil, yellow in colour, was immediately presented, and poising it before us for a moment, she threw it, with a dramatic gesture, to the floor. We held our breaths.

‘Now,' she resumed impressively. ‘Ye have no hands. None of ye have hands.
But I wish that pencil picked up.
'

Whatever prompted this extravagant experiment—perhaps she had been visiting one of her many charities, a home for paralytics in Ardfillan—the result was silence, dead silence. The class was stumped. Suddenly inspiration struck me. As in a daze, I got up, weak from my own boldness, tottered into the public gaze and, prostrating myself before the yellow pencil, snatched at it with my teeth. But the pencil was round and smooth. It escaped my feeble incisors, shot far ahead on the dusty and uneven floor. I followed, crawling face down, like a tracking Indian. Again I tried and again failed. The pursuit continued. Every eye remained riveted upon me. Now the pencil had discovered a crevice between the floor-boards. I nudged it forward with my chin, coaxed it to a favourable position, only to see it roll gently into a deeper crack beside the black-board where a dust of chalk had already fallen. But my blood was up. Sticking out my tongue, I licked my quarry from its hold, then before it started to roll bit hard and true. The class gave a long sigh of applause as, whitened by chalk dust, my nose skinned and raw, I staggered to my feet, with the pencil impaled, clenched between my jaws.

‘Well done!' cried Lady Whalebone, clapping her hands enthusiastically, then placing one upon my head. ‘Ye're a verra clever wee laddie.'

I reddened all over, bursting with pride. To be commended thus by the lady of the manor before my teacher, before the schoolmaster and, best of all, my classmates! And on my first day at school. A very clever boy. What joy to tell my mother.

Meanwhile, as Miss Grant dusted me off, her ladyship, with the air of a phrenologist, still maintained a benevolent hand upon my cranium.

‘How old are ye?'

‘Six years, ma'am.'

‘Ye're unco' small for six.'

‘Yes, m'am.' I yearned to tell her of the illnesses, almost fatal, that had dwarfed me, probably for life, but before I could proceed she went on, encouragingly, a real patroness.

‘Ye must sup your porridge, with plenty of milk. Not skim, mind ye. And never turn up your nose at the staff of life. Ye ken what I mean by the staff of life?'

‘Oh, yes, m'am.' Hot with triumph, conscious of my superior knowledge, recollecting my father's use of the same phrase in connection with the bottle, I gazed at her brightly, answered confidently, loud and clear: ‘ Hagemann's Royal Dutch Yeast!'

A timid titter, swelling uncontrollably to a shout of laughter, rose from the class. Utterly dismayed, I saw my patroness's face alter, approbation supplanted by a heavy frown. Her grip on my skull tightened.

‘Are ye darin' to make fun of me, boy?'

‘Oh no, m'am, no!'

She studied me narrowly for a long moment while my insides seemed to liquefy. Then, repudiating me, she removed her hand with, at the same time, a forward thrust that impelled me forcibly towards my seat.

‘Go! I see I was mistaken. Ye are nothing but a doited clown.'

Humbled, disgraced for life, in fact once again an outcast, I sat for the rest of the morning with bowed head.

On the way home, seeking the hand of my true protector, blinking water from my eyes, I mourned:

‘It's no use, Maggie. I'm no good at anything, just a doited clown.'

‘Ay,' Maggie answered with despondent satire, apparently having had a bad morning in her own class. ‘We're a braw pair.'

Despite Mother's misgivings, and the public humiliation it had caused me, the business of the Royal Dutch Yeast had made a most auspicious start. Undoubtedly the opportunity was there, and my father, naturally clever, with a sharp and far-seeing business eye, was the very man to seize it. His intimate knowledge of the baking trade, the connections he had established throughout the West of Scotland during his five years as a salesman for Murchison's, his attractive personality and easy manner, which he could attune exactly to the status of each customer and which made him generally popular, above all the aplomb with which he would fling off his jacket, tie on a white apron and actually demonstrate the new process in the bake-house, all marked him for success.

Evidence of this was manifest after the first few months, in a family expedition to Winton when Father, having shown us with pride his new little office in the Caledonia Building, took us to a matinee of
Aladdin
at the Theatre Royal and afterwards to the famous Thistle Restaurant. Always an open-handed man, he was more than usually generous that Christmas. In addition to a new winter outfit which did not greatly interest me, I received a sledge of that superb variety, equipped with a steering-bar, known as a Flexible Flyer, while for Mother there arrived one December day from Winton in a big two-horse van something she must have longed for ever since her marriage, a gift whose unexpectedness, since Father characteristically had not breathed a word of its coming, doubled and redoubled Mother's joy. An upright piano. Not one of these yellowish cottage affairs with plush insets, such as we marched to in school, that twanged like an old banjo, but a brand-new, solid, ebony-black instrument, bearing the magic name Bluthner, with twin gilt candlesticks and shining ivory keys that on the merest touch emitted deep and vibrant chords.

Mother, still quite dazed, sat down on the revolving stool that had come with the piano and, while I stood at her shoulder, after running her hands up and down the keyboard with a discerning mobility that amazed me, remarking at the same time, ‘Oh dear, Laurie, my fingers are all thumbs,' she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, then began to play. So vivid is my recollection of this scene I remember even the piece she played. It was Chaminade's ‘Danse d'Echarpes'. To say that I was stunned and spellbound is no exaggeration, not only by the delicious sounds that fell upon my eardrums, but because of the miracle that Mother, whom I had never before heard strike a note and who from loyalty to Father—unable until then to afford a piano—had never introduced the subject in my presence, should after these silent years suddenly produce this unsuspected and accomplished talent and enchant me with a sparkling stream of music. The two porters, having each received a shilling and already with their caps on, in the lobby, had been arrested on their way out. Now, with me, as Mother ended, they applauded spontaneously. She laughed joyfully but shook her head.

‘Oh, no, Laurie, I'm so terribly rusty. But it will soon come back to me.'

Here, in this remark, was another enigma to add to those others, still unsolved, that complicated and disturbed my early years and that, when I pressed Mother for an explanation, caused her merely to smile and to make some evasive answer. Meanwhile nothing could detract from this new joy. Father was not musical and although sympathetic did not really care for the piano; this indeed—for I had begun to
know
Father—may in some degree have delayed its delivery. His idea of music was a stirring melodic melange from a good brass band, and to this end he had provided himself with several pink Edison Bell phonograph cylinders of the famous
Besses o' the Barn.
But to Mother, particularly in our
apartheid
state, the beautiful Bluthner was both consolation and refinement. Every afternoon when she was ‘ dressed', after she had finished the day's housework and satisfied herself that all was shining and in perfect order, she would ‘practise', leaning forward from time to time, since she was naturally a little short-sighted, to study a difficult passage, then, before resuming, brushing aside her soft brown hair which, waved in the middle, fell across her brow. Often when I came home from school and always if the weather was wet, I would come silently into the front room and seat myself by the window to listen. I soon knew the names of the pieces I liked best: Chopin's ‘Polonaise in E Flat', Liszt's ‘Hungarian Rhapsody', followed by Schubert's ‘Moments Musicaux', and my greatest favourite, to which perhaps the name contributed, Beethoven's ‘ Sonata in F Minor', which beyond all the others induced in me a precocious sadness, fostering visions wherein under a shining moon I saw myself leading lost causes in distant lands and reaping the soul-satisfying reward of a hero's lonely grave and from which, resurrecting myself, I would run into kitchen to put the kettle on the range and make hot buttered toast for our tea.

That was a happy winter which nothing subsequently could destroy. Our little ship, sails set full to a favourable wind, rode the tide buoyantly on its safe though solitary course. Father was getting rich. At school I had been moved to a higher class and, although regretting Miss Grant, was agreeably surprised to find myself drawn to my new master. Pin, so unjustly condemned by Maggie—his outbursts were the result of a nervous affliction rather than ill-temper—might be a failure in the pulpit, but as a teacher he excelled. His education had naturally been superior to that of the average village dominie and he had that invaluable knack of putting things in an interesting way. Surprisingly, he seemed to become interested in me. A wry appreciation of our common inferior standing in the village may have appealed to him, or perhaps, though he never overtly made this evident, he had hopes of converting me in the manner of a brand plucked from the burning. Whether or not, I experienced more good than I deserved from this despised and rejected little man.