Читать книгу Malice of Men - Warwick Deeping - Страница 4

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e Lancasters were a lonely trio, and the only relative with whom I came in contact was my mother’s brother, Uncle Sam.

I can understand that Mr. Samuel Wimbush was an embarrassment to my parents and to the careful respectability of the Lancaster shop. Uncle Sam was not at all respectable. I believe that in those days he was vaguely connected with the Turf, and his association with strong liquor was even more intimate. He was a little, perky, Robin Redbreast of a man who wore strange waistcoats, and a very large fawn-coloured billycock hat, and he was the very antithesis of my mother. He had a queer, lilting walk, a very red face, mischievous eyes, and a floridity of language that must have made my poor parents shudder. Uncle Sam would suddenly descend upon Westend, and sometimes in a state of liquor, to be smuggled in by my mother and put to bed. But when Uncle Sam was drunk, he was genially and expansively and affectionately so. He was the sort of man of whom the world said that he was his own worst enemy.

I liked Uncle Sam. I imagine that he had moments of affluence, and periods when his pockets were empty. When fortune favoured him he used to take me down to the beach, set up his stick on the sands, and promise me a penny every time I hit it with a stone. I remember on one occasion making ninepence out of these cockshies, and the assumed despair with which Uncle Sam paid over the money.

“You’ll ruin me, you young buccaneer.”

He was free too with his half-crowns, when he had them, and though the silver pieces must have added lustre to his person, I did not love him only for the money he gave me. Uncle Sam was so different from any other human being whom I had met in Westend-on-Sea. He smelled of adventure as well as of alcohol, and to my young soul in its dreamy, piratical days the adventure was more stimulating than the alcohol. He had strange tales to tell, and he told them with a cocksureness that impressed me.

My mother used to be worried by my association with her brother. I can see her now, ruffling herself up like a small black hen.

“Sam, I won’t have you putting such ideas into the child’s head.”

My uncle laughed at her.

“Fiddlesticks and tigers, he’ll come to no harm through me.”

Which was true. Uncle Sam may have been a boisterous and disgraceful mountebank, but there were no sinister streaks in his soul. Indeed my childish impressions painted him as one of the most honest creatures on earth, and a kind one. He was so careless of his own reputation, and held conventional respectability in such contempt that he was for ever poking fun at it. He could not help poking fun at my poor father, and when my mother, who appeared sensitive upon the subject, flared out at him, he was always ready to mollify her by laughing at himself.

“My dear, never take Sam seriously. Thank God, you didn’t marry a Sam. I never grew up, and never shall, glory be to God, Amen!”

But I remember one incident that made me think rather wonderful things of my uncle. We had in the mews, at the back of Alexandra Road, a ginger-headed brute of a cab-driver who was a terror to dogs, children, and his neighbours. My uncle and I happened to be passing the end of the mews when this fellow was in one of his tantrums. A neighbour’s dog had annoyed him, and he had got the poor little beast into a corner between a dung-pit and the stable wall, and was beating it to death with a broom-handle. A couple of frightened and agitated women were screaming at him, but he was paying no attention to them.

My uncle stood, saw, and went curiously red about the ears and cheeks.

“Here, you stop that.”

My uncle’s voice was a male one, and as such brought the bully round upon his heels. He asked my uncle in very foul language who he might be and what business he had in interfering between a gentleman and a dog. My uncle stood there smiling a little, thin smile, his very bright eyes fixed upon the fellow’s face.

“What you want is a thrashing.”

The cabbie was without his coat, and his grey flannel sleeves were rolled up. I remember that his forearms were freckled and covered with ginger hair. My uncle took his coat off, and handed it to me.

“Look after that, John.”

He was a smaller man than the cabbie, but directly they began to fight I realized that I need not fear for my uncle. He was much more clever and quick than this blundering brute. Ginger’s fists flew all over the place, but he seemed quite unable to hit my uncle, whereas my uncle was most successfully hitting him. I can hear the clean smack of the blows even now, and the way the cabbie’s face became a bloody smudge. What was more, the whole neighbourhood appeared to have been electrified by the news that Jim Higgins was getting a licking. In two minutes we had a small and appreciative crowd round us, and I felt that I was indeed a great man, holding the hero’s coat.

Out-fought, the cabbie tried to rush my uncle and close with him, but the little man was up to such tricks and ready for them. His two fists cut upwards crisply, one after the other, and the bully’s face went all funny and sleepy. I remember the queer way his legs seemed to sag at the knees. He seemed to hang for a moment suspended in the air, and then fall in a crumple on the cobbles.

My uncle just put on his coat and went to look at the dog. The poor beast was lying tucked up and shivering against the wall. My uncle bent over it, caressed it, and the dog licked his hand.

A woman pushed through the crowd, and spread her apron.

“I’ll take him, poor dear. He’s mine.”

“Can you manage?”

“Yes, and thank you for giving that brute what he got.”

My uncle smiled at her, and lifting the dog, lowered him into her apron.

“If he makes any more trouble, mention my name. Mr. Wimbush, London, will find me.”

I remember the last half-crown Uncle Sam gave me. My mother’s birthday was near, and in spite of temptation I was hoarding the silver piece to buy her some present. Spring cleaning was in progress, and I was amusing my small self rolling Uncle Sam’s half-crown down the stairs, when it slipped through a crack between a riser and a tread. This was a tragic business, and though my father attempted to recover the coin by prising up a stair-board, he succeeded only in barking his own knuckles with the hammer, for my father was an ineffectual person in the handling of tools. Also, he was making a horrid mess of the stair-tread, and my mother intervened.

“Alfred, please don’t do that.”

My father had forced up the board, only to reveal a dark and dusty interior, and I now realize that had we exercised the functions of critics we should have attacked the stair’s bottom step, and not the one where the coin had disappeared. My father was easily discouraged and my mother’s house-wifely distress subdued him. He replaced the splintered board, and went to hold his bleeding hand under the kitchen tap.

My mother said to me: “Easy come, easy go, my dear. It’s all your uncle’s fault.”

I cannot say that her reasoning satisfied me, and I blurted out the truth as to the expectations I had held for that half-crown.

“I was going to buy you a birthday present, Mum.”

My mother kissed me.

“Well, I’ll take it as given, dear, and thank you.”

This was natural philosophy, but I have often wondered whether my mother’s present still lives at the bottom of those dusty old stairs.

The disappearance of that coin might have suggested prophecy, for my Uncle Sam never came again to Westend. My curiosity had to be satisfied with vague explanations. I was told that my Uncle Sam had gone abroad, and when I pressed for more detail, America was mentioned. The why and the wherefore were not vouchsafed me, and I did not suspect that Uncle Sam had become a skeleton in our cupboard. I pictured him as riding a mustang and blazing away with a revolver at Red Indians, and my mother did not crush the illusion.

Moreover, those were such dark days. It was a wet and dreary winter, and it seemed to me that fewer people came into my father’s shop. I used to see him going round and turning down the gas jets. Nor did our food appear so good and plentiful as it had been. There was so much boiled rice, clammy solid rice pudding, margarine, and boiled potatoes. My mother’s face had a pinched look, and her chilblains were more troublesome than usual. And I remember that my father appeared to be troubled with strange and distressful noises under his waistcoat.

There was an occasion when I surprised my mother in tears. I found her sitting by the parlour window in the failing light, bending her head over some piece of mending. I was profoundly shocked, and a little frightened by my mother’s tears. It seemed so strange that she should be sitting there working and weeping.

“Have you got a headache, Mum?”

She lied to me, though I know now it must have been heart-ache.

“Yes, dear.”

I put my hand to her forehead and found it cold instead of hot.

“Why don’t you lie down on the sofa, Mum?”

“Perhaps I will, dear, presently.”

My bedroom was at the back of the house, my parents’ room in the front, and a narrow landing separated the two doors. If I happened to be awake I could hear my mother and father talking as they undressed, but at this time the sound of their voices seemed to go on and on into the night. I had a feeling that some mysterious and sinister thing was threatening my mother and father and our home. I could not say what it was, though my childish fancy might have pictured it as some hairy and strange creature, malicious and cruel.

My curiosity was piqued, and I crept out of bed one night, opened my door without a sound, and stood in my nightshirt, listening outside my parents’ room. My mother’s voice was speaking. She kept mentioning the name of a mysterious person called Bowker. It was Bowker this and Bowker that, and all that I could gather was that this Mr. Bowker was causing worry and distress to my mother and father. I knew a Mr. Bowker by sight, a thin-lipped, dusty old man rather like a desiccated goat, with a tuft of grey hair on his chin, who wore big black knobbly boots. I had seen Mr. Bowker in my father’s shop.

I heard my father’s voice say: “Well, if anything should happen to me, there’ll be the insurance.”

My mother’s voice uttered a little, quick, wounded cry.

“Alfred, you mustn’t talk like that.”

“The old Shylock wants his pound of flesh. If he sells us up—”

“Oh, my dear, it isn’t as bad as that.”

“God knows, Edie, I wish it wasn’t.”

I am not likely to forget that month of May. My birthday was to arrive on the 29th, and May in Westend was a festal month to me. I can see the place now, blue sky, the silvered estuary, the old black pier, the gardens on the cliff, the painted fronts and green balconies of Royal Terrace, with its shrubbery full of lilacs, laburnums, and red may. The beach smelled of boats that had been painted and varnished for the season. The funny, old floating swimming-bath flew its towels and bathing suits like bunting. Jobbing gardeners were planting the Royal Terrace gardens with red geraniums, white daisies, yellow calceolaria and blue lobelia. The façades of No. 3 and No. 7 had been repainted a glossy cream.

I remember running home from school about twelve o’clock, and surprising my father walking down the Alexandra Road, wearing a straw hat and carrying a rolled-up towel. It was unusual for my father to go bathing and at such an hour; also, his face puzzled me. My sudden appearance seemed to embarrass him.

“Just going for a dip, Johnnie.”

“Can I come too?”

My father smiled at me in a queer, wincing way.

“Water too deep for you, my dear. Run along and tell mother I’ll be back for dinner.”

Assuredly those waters were too deep for me. I did not go home at once, but sneaked down the High Street after my father, and stood by the railings above the pier to watch the white boat take him out to the floating swimming-bath. I saw my father climb the steps and disappear behind the row of white dressing-boxes. Then I ran home to my mother. Miss Lowndes, our assistant, was alone in the shop, and I found my mother in the kitchen, bending over the stove.

“Father’s gone swimming, Mum.”

I can see her now, turning sharply, and the way her eyes seemed to open inside and to stare. She had a spoon in her right hand, and her hand seemed to sink and let some white stuff dribble down her black skirt.

“Swimming?”

“Yes, he said he’d be back for dinner.”

My mother must have known that the thing she had feared and fought against was very near to her. She put a hand to her head, stood a moment, and then, with a peculiar calmness, went on with her work. I can remember helping her to lay the table. We were to have soup, and suet pudding for our dinner, and my mother sat down with the soup tureen on the table, and made me sit down with her.

“We will wait for your father.”

I can remember thinking that the soup would be cold, and wondering whether we were to have treacle or jam with our pudding, when my mother, who appeared to be listening, got up suddenly, went to the window and closed it. Her behaviour seemed to me most strange. She ladled me out some soup, gave me a slice of bread, and went out, locking the door. I could hear voices below, and sudden, strange terror possessed me. I ran to the window and managed to raise the lower sash.

I saw the head and shoulders of a man in a blue jersey, the end of what looked like a white door, and someone’s naked feet sticking out from under a white blanket. The man and the thing he was helping to carry disappeared from my view. I became aware of a little crowd of people on the pavement. Footsteps were coming up the stairs, slowly and with a suggestion of stress and of effort. I remember running to the door and beating on it with my fists.

“Let me out, let me out.”

I had a horror of something, a dreadful premonition that seemed shut in with me in that familiar room.

My mother came and opened the door. She pushed me back gently into the room. I shall never forget the curious, dead dignity of her face.

“There has been an accident, dear. Dr. Miller is coming to your father.”

I burst into tears and clung to her, for somehow my young soul was not to be fooled. She was only a little thing, but she picked me up, and clasping me to her, walked round and round the room with me, her dry, white face close to mine.

“You must never forget your father, John.”

That is how it happened, and though I did not know it then, I discovered the truth in a little old diary of my mother’s, after her death. I have always regarded this act of my father’s as a deed of desperate courage conceived for the sake of my mother and myself. It was not the cowardice of a poor, ineffectual failure that had inspired him to end his life in a way that should cheat scandal. He had planned it so simply and so shrewdly. He had just gone bathing, and got himself drowned.

All the evidence proved it to have been an accident. Mr. Abraham, who owned the swimming-bath, was able to swear that my father appeared in the best of spirits, and joked with him just before taking his plunge into the sea. Dr. Miller’s suggestion was that it had been a case of cramp.

My mother could not be choused out of his insurance money. By that last act my father had assured her the sum of five hundred pounds. My father was buried in the Westend cemetery, and every year I have visited his grave. He was forty-three when he died, and I was nine.

My mother kept on the shop in Alexandra Street for three months, and that too was an act of heroism. I suppose that Mr. Bowker had his blood-money, and that the mortgage was paid. My mother must have been able to dispose of the business as a going concern, and to leave Westend with some capital behind her, but what she suffered during those weeks is recorded in her diary.

I have read and reread those brief entries. There was no self-pity in them, no false emotion. They were the stark, curt confessions of a woman whom life had wounded, and who neither forgave nor forgot.

My mother had been a religious woman, and the bitter sincerity of these confessions showed that she was no conventional Job.

“God is on the side of the people with money.”

“Cash casteth out compassion.”

“I will work and plan that my son may not suffer shame.”

“My husband was murdered by a mortgage.”

My mother had ceased to humbug herself. I suppose she accepted the hypocrisy of an age that sent out missionaries to the heathen, and imprisoned its servants in dark basements, and underpaid its working men. She became the gentle yet remorseless realist, a woman who conformed to the commercial creed, but refrained from polishing the Sabbath hat. My mother rarely went to church again after my father’s death.

That, too, considering the situation in which she found herself, was an act of courage.