Читать книгу Sackcloth into Silk - Warwick Deeping - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Karl’s brothers were for ever quarrelling. George, now aged seventeen, had been apprenticed to a bicycle and motor mechanic in the Holloway Road. It was a source of pride to George that he was using a razor daily to remove a vigorous growth of ginger-coloured hair, while Augustus’s chin was satisfied with a bi-weekly scraping. George was loud, flamboyant and arrogant, with a passion for bright yellow boots and flaring ties. Augustus wore red. He could not cope with George on the physical plane, and so—with a little icy smirk—he placed himself upon the platform of the mental and employed sarcasm.

Rebecca would suffer no wrangling in public. She was very much the matriarch.

“None of that, you two.—And where did you get those boots, my lad?”

George was not above making secret raids upon his mother’s shop, oiling his way downstairs very early in the morning. He was a vain beast who liked to dazzle the women.

“Bought ’em.”

His mother was not to be bluffed.

“Take them off and let me look.”

“Do you think I’m a bloody kid?”

“I don’t think much of you at the best of times,” said his mother,—“and don’t you use that word in my house. Show me those boots.”

George, as though to humour the old woman, removed the right boot.—“There you are.”—His mother gave him a dark look and demanded the other boot. Yes, that other boot was marked on the tongue with an R.S. in blue ink.

“Thought so,” said Rebecca, putting both boots into her capacious lap; “you keep out of my shop, my lad. It is not a playground for sneak-thieves.”

But Karl’s brethren did agree upon one matter. Their mother indulged in gross favouritism. She spoilt young Karl. Karl could have free clothes out of the shop; if there was any shortage of food, Karl did not suffer from it. Karl could ask for a second helping of jam roll and get it. His two brothers were jealous of Karl, and their jealousy was—in a sense—prophetic. He was the beloved, and as one of the world’s beloveds he was to provoke the hatred and envy of many other men.

Even in the case of Cinderella there was a clash. George, who was a patron of the Globe’s gallery, and who was proposing to extend his patronage to a junior member of the chorus, had become a source of annoyance to Mr. Piper. There were loiterers and loiterers, and a gentleman who could offer a sop to Cerberus might be allowed to smuggle in notes, but Mr. Piper would not tolerate louts on his doorstep. “ ’Ere, you blow off.—I’ve seen enough of your phiz.” And when George’s small brother confessed that he had been admitted into the star’s dressing-room, George was disgusted.

“Blooming kid like you.—What had she got on? Pink tights?”

Karl was secretive. Did one discuss romance’s legs in public? Rebecca and her three sons were at the supper table, and George liked showing off before his brothers, and especially before that pale parsnip of a Gus.

“Did she kiss you?”

Karl nodded, and then—George—as a man of the world—proceeded to be pathological. He knew a thing or two he did, and if Rebecca allowed the kid to be kissed by women like Lotty Godbold, well—it might be a case for the doctor. George dared to use a particular word and to suggest a certain disease——His mother flared into one of her white, but controlled, furies. Karl was sent out of the room, and told to wait upstairs. Yes, he should come down to finish his supper. And then Rebecca dealt with George, while Augustus stood in a corner, pale, smug, and approving. She laid upon George the nearest weapon that came to her hands—a small poker—and George, with his large red paws protecting his head, was driven out into the night. His mother addressed to him a few final words from the doorstep.

“If you ever use words like that again in my house, my lad, you’ll go out and stay out.”

George was a vindictive young brute. Returning from work on the Saturday and going up to his room to adorn himself he saw Karl in the back garden busy with an empty packing-case. The child was clever with his hands. George watched him, while he changed his clothes, and then, going down and assuring himself that Rebecca was busy in the shop, George marched out into the back yard.

“Hallo, kid.—What’s the game?”

Karl looked anxiously at George.

“I’m making a theatre.”

“Going to put Cinderella in it,—what?—I’ve got a message for you from Cinderella.”

“Really?” said Karl.

“Yes, really. You come into the shed. It’s secret and confidential.”

George, having enticed his small brother into the shed, and closed the door, stood in front of him, grinning.

“Like to hear the message?”

“Yes, George.”

“The lady told me to give you a smack on the mug.”

George had hard red knuckles, and he struck the child across the face with the back of his hand.

“Now—then—blub.”

But Karl refused to blub.

“Let me out.—I’ve got to help in the shop.”

“Sneak,—would you?—Blub. Go on, blub.”

Again that red knuckled hand smacked Karl across the mouth. The tears came, but not quite as George had expected them. Karl’s face was wet, but it flamed. He threw himself upon George, beating at him with his fists, until George, giving him a shove, sent him sprawling into a corner.

“That’s it,—blub.—And then go and sneak to Ma.”

But that is just what Karl did not do. The child was not a whimperer. In years to come he was to learn to take bitter stabbings and cudgellings and sneers, and to take them with a cock of the head, and a white, resolute scorn. He could be gay and witty in the face of venom. Squeal? Not he, and so give his enemies cause to gloat. When George swaggered off, giving Karl’s embryo theatre a kick as he passed, Karl crept upstairs and washed his face, and plastered his hair with a brush dipped in the jug. His tears had been tears of tempestuous anger. He carried out his stool and sat himself down to watch his mother’s property.

Rebecca observed him from behind the counter.

“Karl.”

“Yes, mum.”

“Put your overcoat on.”

In the heat of the affair Karl had forgotten his overcoat. Conflict did not freeze him. It made him hot of soul.