A Song of Sixpence (9 page)

Prince Albert Terrace enjoyed a good situation well up the hill amongst some excellent neighbouring mansions, and although slightly dimmed, still maintained much of an earlier elegance. Built of finely cut stone, in a semi-Georgian, part Victorian style with elaborate double entrance porticoes and wide bay windows, it consisted of a number of large luxurious maisonettes with separate, roomy flats above. These maisonettes had finely proportioned high-ceilinged rooms, an attractive ornamental garden in front and the privacy of a long walled-in lawn behind. Naturally we could not aspire to such grandeur, but in the storey above, in flat number seven, all freshly papered and painted, we had ample accommodation, and here we faced a future that seemed favourable, especially to my father who, responding to the change of scene and the briskness of the air, which he inhaled deeply in breathing exercises morning and evening at the open window, was full of sanguine expectation. Yet I was troubled by something altogether new in my mother's expression, when she paused-in her arrangement of the house, a subtle harassment which, when aware that I was looking at her, she would banish with a smile.

In Ardfillan there was no excuse for Sunday self-indulgence. We had in the lower town the double advantage of St Mary's Church and its parochial school in Clay Street. Moreover the first person to call upon us one afternoon, and to win us utterly by his frank gaiety and unselfconscious charm, was the young parish priest, Father Macdonald, a Highlander from Inverness-shire who had studied at the excellent Blair's College in Aberdeen. Angus Macdonald was the kind of man whom, as my father put it, even the staunchest Orangeman must have liked. Mother, still a little scared of priests, whom she had never seen at close quarters, could not believe her eyes, when after tea, he got up and to my unrestrained delight, demonstrated the Highland Fling. In due course, under his tactful persuasion, certain technical adjustments, which I scarcely understood, were made in my parents' marriage which reconciled them to ecclesiastical orthdoxy. Moreover, without in any way deploring the inadequacy of my own religious knowledge, which was extreme, he suggested that, at least for the present, I should attend the parish school. So to St Mary's, the following week, I was sent.

I am obliged to confess that while gratified by my advancement to the third class where my teacher, Sister Margaret Mary, seemed prepared to make much of me, I missed my old friend Pin and was not, on the whole, entranced by my new school. To get to Clay Street I had a long walk by a back road that led downhill to the poorest part of the lower town, which was in effect the working-class district of Ardfillan. Here in a narrow street, with a tenement building opposite, were the precincts of St Mary's—church, school, and presbytery, all of raw red-brick construction, practical, but starkly indicative of restricted means. So too, amongst the schoolchildren, did this sad note of poverty prevail. They came almost entirely from the poor, immediate neighbourhood of the church, many of them children of despised Irish ‘tatie howkers' who had come to work in the Clydeside potato fields, and some, alas, in a very ragged state. They played odd games which I did not understand, the makeshift games of the underprivileged, using clay marbles, tin-cans, chalk-marked walls, balls made of paper and cloth tied together with odd pieces of string. The truth is that Ardfillan Catholics who had the means sent their children to other schools, to Levenford Academy or to the Jesmit College in Winton, though never, of course, to Beechfield, an establishment which remained supremely and exclusively patrician. And so, despite the goodness I found there, the general effect of St. Mary's was depressive. A feeling of social inferiority was immediately implied and communicated to me, a sort of spiritual wound, deriving from my religion. When I tried to convey something of this to Mother, who had other more serious preoccupations, she would try to comfort me.

‘It's for your good, dear, and it won't be for long. You must just put up with it for the time being.'

Lack of companionship was my greatest cross. I use this phrase since I was by this time learning the idiom of the saints. Whatever their moral excellence, Mother could not bring herself to allow me to be friendly with boys who, as Father put it, had no backside to their trousers. And so, feeling myself neither fish nor fowl, I mooned around during my leisure hours in boredom and solitude.

My sole recourse, though it served merely to increase my discontent, was to wander across the hill to the beautiful green playing-fields of Beechfield School. Peering well concealed behind the surrounding hawthorn hedge, I watched the games in progress with a burning, envious longing. Here was everything that I craved, twin white goalposts flanking well-marked green pitches on which the players, many as small as I, in their varying fascinating house colours ranging from scarlet to vivid blue, thudded balls about, ran, passed, tackled and scrummed, in a manner to be expected of boys who would go to Fettes, Glenalmond, Loretto, or even, as some did, to the best English public schools. When I could bear it no longer I turned moodily for home, kicking imaginary goals so wildly that I stubbed my toes against the kerb, thus causing Mother to complain that I was ruining my new boots.

One Saturday, when at a particularly loose end, I was attempting to amuse myself by taking pot-shots at imaginary targets in the road outside the front garden of No. 7. Suddenly one of the stones flew sideways out of my hand and, describing a lethal parabola, crashed through the front window of the maisonette above which we lived. The icy splintering of falling glass horrified me. I dashed upstairs to Mother.

‘You must go at once and apologize. The lady's name is Miss Greville. Say that you will pay for it. Come and I'll give your face a quick wipe.' She called after me as I went out: ‘Mind now, your best manners.'

Agitatedly, I pressed the bell of Miss Greville's front door. Out of the corner of one eye I could see the big jagged hole in the window. An elderly maid in a neat cap and uniform admitted me. She had grey hair and, I thought, a discouraging expression.

‘Wait here,' she told me, when I had explained the nature of my visit.

As I stood in the hall, I was struck by the remarkable sight of two crossed oars on the wall, both cut down in size, and with the blades painted bright blue. Other unusual objects were catching my eye, notably a pair of foils, but now the maid had returned and was showing me into the front room where Miss Greville, standing by the fatal window, turned to take a good look at me. I, in turn, looked at her.

She was a tall, solid woman of, I guessed, about forty-five, full-bosomed and exceedingly erect. She had a pale, full face, its fullness exaggerated by her light-coloured hair puffed out at the sides under pads, and by her tight, stiffly starched collar fastened with a stud. Her dress was simple, even severe: a grey trailing skirt and white blouse over which dangled the thin chain of her pince-nez. She looked what she was, unalterably a gentlewoman, and also what she had been, a schoolmistress. I had heard my mother say that she had taught, at one time, in St Anne's Girls' School; She would have been to me at that moment a formidable figure but for a certain absence of manner, an air that detached her from the more sordid realities of life amongst which I was one.

‘Please, miss, I have broken your window.'

‘So it appears.' She spoke in a high, clear voice, her accent not of Ardfillan, but rather what the local accent unsuccessfully affected. ‘At least it was honourable of you to come of your own free will.'

I accepted the unworthy compliment in silence.

‘How did it happen?'

‘I was throwing, please, miss.'

‘Young Carroll … I assume you are young Carroll … do not address me as though I were the girl in a teashop. You may call me Miss Greville, at least until our intimacy develops. What were you throwing?'

‘Stones, Miss … Greville.'

‘Stones! Good heavens, what a depraved habit. I shouldn't mind you breaking my window with a ball. But stones! Why?'

‘If you want to know,' I answered beginning to warm up ‘ it's because I've a pretty good aim. I can hit any post on the other side of the road you like.'

‘You can?' she exclaimed, with a show of interest.

‘Shall I show you?'

‘No, not with stones.' She paused. ‘Don't you ever throw a ball?'

‘No, Miss Greville. I haven't got one.'

She studied me, almost with pity, then, telling me to sit down, she went out. While she was gone, I sat on the edge of a stool and looked about me. The big room baffled yet awed me. Strange pieces of furniture, the like of which I had never seen, not dark and shiny with french polish like our best mahogany suite from the Emporium, but mostly of a faded, honey colour, the chairs with seats worked in coloured threads, an inlaid cabinet revealing china patterned in yellow and gold, the carpet a soft grey with a central design of faded pink. Flowers were in the window space and also in a great blue bowl on the piano which, bearing no resemblance to ours, was long and flat.

My vision had travelled to the mantelpiece on which stood a considerable number of small silver cups, when Miss Greville came back.

‘You may have this.' As I stood up she handed me a ball. ‘It has a history, which probably wouldn't interest you. It belonged to my brother.'

‘The one with the oars?' I asked, feeling myself inspired.

‘No, no. Not the wet bob. The other younger one.' She smiled absently, and though not unkind, it was to my regret unmistakably a smile of dismissal. I had not wished to come but now, strangely, I did not want to go. These mysterious references to wet and presumably dry Bobs intrigued me. I made an effort to prolong the conversation.

‘Doesn't your young brother want the ball himself?'

‘He doesn't want anything now,' she rejoined impersonally. ‘He was killed two years ago at Spion Kop.'

‘Oh, Miss Greville,' I exclaimed in a burst of sympathy. ‘He gave his life for his King and country.'

She considered me with inexpressible repugnance.

‘Don't be a sentimental little prig, or our acquaintance, hitherto brief and uneventful, will cease forthwith.' And she rang the bell for me to be shown out.

My mother, although distressed that I had forgotten to offer payment for the window, evinced both interest and pleasure when I gave her an account of my visit, from which I tactfully suppressed the final passage. Ever since our arrival she had been politely curious about our neighbour. But the ball, on inspection, seemed rather profitless. Hard, covered in leather, with a sewn seam, it did not bounce and was in every way unsympathetic to my usual practices. That evening I showed it to Father.

‘It's a cricket ball,' he explained. ‘And it's been played with.'

‘She told Laurence it had a history,' Mother interposed interestedly.

‘No doubt.' Father gave her his ironic smile. ‘According to the house agent, she's full of history. They were very grand people at one time. A big estate near Cheltenham. But her papa went through most of it, and she took up teaching. First at Cheltenham College, then at St Anne's. But she's given it up now.'

‘I wonder why?' Mother meditated.

Father's smile deepened.

‘I am led to believe,' he murmured in his best manner, ‘ that in certain of her manifestations she is inclined to be a trifle pec-ul-iar.'

He gave to the word an intonation it had in a popular song of the day which began ‘Oh, isn't she pec-ul-iar?'

‘Nonsense,' Mother exclaimed defensively. ‘That's just idle gossip. She seems a perfect lady to me, and she was exceedingly kind to Laurie. I mean to bow and thank her next time we meet.'

In this way, through the broken window, our momentous acquainted with Miss Greville was begun.

The acknowledgement, correct in every way and even reserved, that Mother made towards Miss Greville some days later met with an agreeable response. Our neighbour, living alone and with, apparently, a restricted circle of friends, seemed disposed to an acquaintanceship. She called and left her card. Ten days later Mother returned the call and was given afternoon tea, an entertainment from which she returned flushed with pleasure and teeming with exciting news.

Miss Amelia Greville, she reported to Father and me at supper, was charming, and very much, Mother stressed the words, a lady. Her furniture and silver, which had come from the family home near Cheltenham, were lovely, in fact everything in the house was in exquisite taste. She was artistic, fond of music, played the cello, and hoped to arrange duets with Mother. An enthusiastic botanist, she had displayed a wonderful album of pressed wild flowers. She often had gone climbing in Switzerland. Her parents were dead. She had two brothers who had been educated at Eton, the surviving one now farming in Kenya. She attended St Jude's, a church notably High Anglican, and was therefore well disposed towards Catholics. She was most … Suddenly meeting Father's eye, bent on her with more than usual ironic indulgence, Mother had broken off.

‘Yes,' she blushed slightly, ‘she was nice to me. But quite apart from that, I like her. And you know, Con, I have missed having a woman friend, especially with you away all day.'

‘Then I'm glad you've found one,' Father said generously, ‘only don't … well, don't push too hard, lass.'

I did not in the least agree with Father. Miss Greville had deeply impressed me. Indeed I had fallen into the habit, when I returned from my ragged school, of hanging around the front garden in the hope, which so far had proved illusory, of attracting her attention. Now, thinking of those fascinating blue oars, I said rather wistfully:

‘It must be nice to have had a brother at a school like Eton even if you didn't go there yourself.'

Father laughed, as if he found something in my remark, or my manner of making it, to amuse him.