Читать книгу Growing Up In The West - John Muir - Страница 8

ONE

WHEN ONE EVENING in the early autumn of 1911 Tom Manson saw his brother Mansie coming out with Helen Williamson through the gate of the Queen’s Park in Glasgow, he stopped as if he had been given a blow on the chest. He told himself that he must be mistaken; but, no, there was no doubt about it; Mansie and Helen were walking along there like old friends. They had not noticed him, but with their faces turned towards each other went off along the park railings towards Pollokshaws Road. Behind his incredulous rage Tom felt honestly alarmed for them; they were so completely unconscious of their danger; they had no idea that they had been seen! But then, as by the single turn of a screw, his fury completely flooded him, sweeping out everything else. He turned and walked down Victoria Road. ‘By God, I’ll get even with him!’ he thought, but no expedient came to his mind, and his anger took another leap upwards.

He pushed open the swing-door of a pub and went up to the counter. The barmaid smiled at him; he could see that all right; but at the same time it was only a distant glassy re-arrangement of her features, so he paid no attention to it but ordered a double Scotch, and when that was swallowed, a second one which he drank more slowly. His anger now quite filled him, yet when he turned into Garvin Street and neared his home it took another leap upwards, lifted him up with it, so that he seemed to be walking partly on the air. Slamming the house door behind him he made at once for the room where he and Mansie slept and began to haul his clothes and belongings to the parlour. The sound of furniture banging brought his mother from the kitchen.

‘What are you doing, Tom?’ she cried. ‘You’ll break the bit sticks o’ furniture if you’re no’ careful.’

‘Leave me alone!’

‘But, lamb, what’s the matter?’

‘If you think I’m going to sleep another night in the same room as that—’ He had to stop, for only one word would come to his tongue, and he could not speak it out before his mother. So in revenge he said: ‘I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going to ship on the first liner I find.’

‘But what’s wrong, Tom? Tell me what’s wrong?’

‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you leave me alone!’

His mother turned, and her bowed back as she left the room filled him with despair. No, he would never be able to leave this hole! He was chained here. He went through to the bedroom again and carried his bedclothes to the parlour, threw them on the horsehair sofa, and stood staring at them. A key turned in the outside door, and someone stepped into the lobby. He stood rigidly listening. There were voices in the kitchen and then steps in the lobby; but it was his cousin Jean who entered.

‘What idiocy have you been up to now?’ she asked. ‘Do you know that your mother’s crying in the kitchen?’

‘Leave me alone,’ said Tom. But now he spoke in a merely sulky voice.

Jean looked at the bedclothes piled on the sofa: ‘A fine mess you’ve made. Are you going to sleep here?’ Then she turned to him, her voice changing, and asked: ‘Tom, what has happened?’

‘Oh, it’s no business of yours.’ He went across to the window, and looking out said: ‘Well, if you want to know, Mansie’s walking out a lady that used to be a great visitor here at one time. I caught them coming out of the Queen’s Park.’

‘What? Not Helen Williamson?’

‘Yes, Helen Williamson.’

‘But it’s absurd! It’s impossible!’

‘Well, I saw them. Haven’t I told you?’

Jean was silent for a moment, then she asked: ‘Did they see you?’

‘They were too much occupied with each other.’

She stood looking at him: ‘But what’s to be done now?’

‘That’s not my affair. I’m going to ship on a liner tomorrow.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. You know you’ve got to consider your mother. But I never thought Mansie was such a terrible fool as that!’

‘Well, do you expect me to live here after this?’

Jean stood thinking. Presently she said: ‘Go for a walk. And I’ll make your bed and put this room in some order.’

She began at once, turning her back on him. At the door he said: ‘At any rate, it wasn’t my fault this time.’

‘Who says it was your fault?’ Then she burst out: ‘That woman will be a curse to the both of you! I never liked her.’

‘It’s his fault, not hers.’

‘Do you stick up for her still? But I don’t deny that it’s Mansie’s fault. I’ll have to tell your mother, I suppose.’

Tom walked rapidly up Victoria Road. But when he came to the park gates again his rage met him like a wave and turned him automatically in the opposite direction from the one that Mansie and Helen had taken. With his mother and Jean there he would never be able to get back at that creeper. Velvet-heeled creeper! Scented velvet-heeled creeper! Rows of black, spiked railings spun past him, and he struck at them with his stick. Like a prison, these neat streets and numbered houses and genteel railings. Why had his father hauled him back that time when he had tried to run off to sea? He had actually got to Blackness, was on the boat, tucked away all safe in the forecastle; and then his father came, the very skin at the root of his nose white with anger; and he had got out of the ship again and into the cart, and his father had driven him home to the farm, five hopeless miles. He had been sixteen then – a fellow was far too much at the mercy of everybody at sixteen! – and then his father had had his first heart attack, and that had put a stop to all hope of running away to sea. And when his father died there was his mother to look after, for Mansie had done a bunk to Glasgow long before that: the creeper always knew how to sneak out of things. No wonder he had taken to drink when they had gone to Blackness after his father’s death; he knew every stone in the streets and hated every one of them; but when you got drunk your nose wasn’t brought up against them at every turn; it seemed to give you some hope. Oh, why hadn’t they let him go to sea? They hadn’t known what they were doing.

He was walking now through a wide park dotted with groups of young men in shirt-sleeves playing football. And as if in response to his release from the constriction of the rows of railed houses, he saw himself again, as he had often seen himself, standing at the prow of an ocean-going ship in the solitary morning watch, standing bare-footed and with uncovered head in the wide flapping trousers and blue jersey of a sailor, a cigarette between his lips, a foreign look, the look of one who has seen many lands, on his face. The circle of the sea horizon rose and sank with a slow turning motion like a great coin lazily spinning, and within that ring of danger he was secure, for danger itself was a shield, turning aside all that was equivocal and treacherous and creeping. Yes, that was the life for him; but his father had not known and his mother would never know what a thirst a fellow could have for the sea, so that he seemed to choke on dry land, choke as if a dry clod were rammed down his throat. The sea, or the Wild West with a revolver at your side, some place where you knew your friends and your enemies, knew where you stood.

But suddenly, while he was still in mid-ocean, the turn of Helen’s neck as she looked up at Mansie rose before him. Damn and blast her! It was as if she had given him a blow between the eyes, and he, lying on his back in the gutter, were asking her in pure astonishment why she had done that. And he would have given up everything for her. How good he had felt at that party, the first evening they had met! But he mustn’t think of that. Still, when she wouldn’t tell him her address, by God she had been perfectly right! Better for him if he had never found it out. A damned fool, too, to have wandered round Langside every evening that week in the frost and cold, among all these new streets, great blocks of redstone they were, with genteel railed gardens in front. Of course he hadn’t met her there. But on the Sunday he had got up good and early and gone to the church she attended. Well, he had asked for his medicine pretty thoroughly, right enough. He had looked all round the church, but couldn’t find her. He might have given it up as a bad job then; but no, he had to wait on the pavement when the service was over, and after a while out she came. He had hardly dared to step up to her, the soft fool; he didn’t know at that time that she was the sort that would kiss and canoodle with anybody. But it was all easier than he had expected, far too damned smooth and easy altogether, and she agreed to go for a walk in the park with him without winking an eyelash. Might as well have given him her address at the first go off; but that was like her. And then it was a long time before he plucked up his courage and got it out – a nice sunny day it was, after the frost – but out it came at last: ‘I love you.’ And his voice had trembled: was there ever such a fool? It had made her catch her breath all the same; but then she had replied in that superior way of hers: ‘How can you tell that? You don’t know me.’ But he thought he knew her better than anybody had ever known a girl, and that began it. Yet even then he hadn’t dared to touch her, or to kiss her, for weeks and weeks. Still, that had been the happiest time he had had with her. Better if the thing had always stayed at that stage. For her kisses drove a fellow frantic, and she didn’t seem to know it. Flung herself at you and thought she could go on doing that till the cows came home; kissing and nothing more. Thus far and no farther. And after it was over she would just pat her hat to rights again, looking as superior and genteel as ever, and that was that. How could he have stood it? No wonder he got violent that night in Maxwell Park; he was beyond himself, he couldn’t help it. But then he had crept and crawled before her, licked her boots, told her he was a waster, and promised never to offend again. And after all it wasn’t any use, for she kept as stiff as a poker, never gave him another chance, took no pity on a fellow. And now she was kissing and canoodling with that creeper. By God, if he had guessed that would ever happen he would have known what to do; he would have paid no attention to her objections; that was how to treat tarts of her kind. A proper soft mark he had been.

Now he was among streets again. His anger, which had winged his feet, now fell like the sudden ceasing of a wind. He felt tired; a drink would do him good. He pushed open the swing-door of a pub. As he sat drinking, and the comforting equivocality of alcohol spread through his mind, he gave himself over more and more completely to the thought that he was a waster, as though it were a consoling thought. It didn’t matter what happened to a poor devil like him; let them kiss and canoodle. But then – for even a waster must take some measures of defence against his enemies – he suddenly saw that he must get back before Mansie; it was a point of honour, a point of honour that a creeper mightn’t understand; but it would be indecent if he wasn’t home before Mansie, if he wasn’t sitting at home and waiting for him. So Tom got unsteadily to his feet.

But as he approached Garvin Street a long forgotten memory of his childhood came back to him. A big lout, the son of a neighbouring farmer, had lain in wait for Mansie one evening. Mansie had stood with a terrified look on his face, refusing to fight; but Tom, although he was only a little boy at the time, had flown at Mansie’s tormentor screaming: ‘You’re no’ to hurt Mansie! You’re no’ to hurt Mansie!’ And everybody had laughed, and there had been no fight. And now Mansie had given him a stab in the back. Without provocation. His elder brother that he had always looked up to, that he would have done anything for. ‘By God, I’ll get even with him!’ he said as he went up the stairs, but it was only the repetition of an empty phrase. And when he opened the door he felt so tired that he walked straight through to the parlour – driven out of his very room, by God! – and forlornly went to bed.

After a long and inconclusive debate with his mother in the kitchen, Mansie wearily betook himself to his room. He had denied that there was anything between himself and Helen, denied it as indignantly as if he were speaking the truth; and indeed what he had told her was partly true at least, entirely true in fact if you only counted the time up to the moment when, yielding to a silly impulse – it had become far too much of a habit with him, dash it! – he had stooped down and kissed Helen on the mouth. He knew it was a mistake the minute it was done, knew it as soon as he found her in his arms, knew it while her lips were still clinging to his: a silly goat to have got himself into such a fix for the sake of a moment’s pleasure. But then, whether it was the total abandon with which Helen fell into his arms, as if she had been fatefully poised in a perilous equilibrium that only one touch was needed to destroy, or whether it was the slightly terrifying thought that this was Tom’s girl, whom it would be wicked to trifle with, almost blasphemous to embrace unless one were driven by an irresistible passion that excused everything: all at once they had both become serious, they had looked at each other like conspirators suddenly bound together by a fatal act that they had not foreseen a moment before, revealing them to each other in a flash, so that it would have been useless, even perverse, to pretend any longer. This wasn’t like his other affairs with girls at all! The frightening thought had shot through Mansie’s mind while Helen’s lips were still pressed to his. There was no turning back now. A serious business!

And now, as he lit the gas-jet in his room, he thought again, listening involuntarily for any sound from the parlour where Tom was lying: A serious business! But all the same what he had told his mother was true. Helen had only come to him for help and advice. And besides, it was a dashed shame of Tom to have lain in wait for her, stopping her and speaking to her like that: the poor girl was frightened out of her wits and didn’t know where to turn. Tom should have taken his dismissal like a man. Why, it was two months now since she had told him that it was all over between them! And yet the fellow still went on persecuting her, even stopping her in the street: that was carrying things a bit too far. Still it was dashed unfortunate that Tom had seen them that evening. It was like him, all the same; always stumbling against things that hurt him, always getting himself and other people into trouble. Well, he had only himself to blame; Helen would never have had him back whatever happened.

Mansie glanced round the bedroom. It had a strange naked look. Made a fellow feel quite queer, that empty iron bedstead; something ugly and threatening about it. Things would be dashed uncomfortable in the house now, with Tom in that state of mind. Mansie slowly took off his clothes. Unpleasant going to bed with that thing standing there by the wall as if it were watching you. Wish Bob Ryrie were here to keep a fellow company. Bob would be able to advise one too. He turned his back on the bedstead. A serious business! And he was to see Helen on Saturday afternoon. He almost wished now that he had not fixed up that appointment with her; but there was no drawing back; the damage was done; Tom had seen them, and there would be no use in trying to convince him that—

Putting out the gas, Mansie slipped into bed, carefully avoiding the iron bedstead still reproachfully and threatingly exposing its shameful nakedness to him in the light of the street lamp outside. For a long time he lay awake thinking of Helen and Tom and wishing that Bob Ryrie were there with him. He felt forsaken and unjustly treated, like a child locked as a punishment in an empty room where damaged and disused pieces of furniture are kept. But at last he fell asleep.