The Green Years Page 4

  I contemplated him with a new awe, a new tenderness. Wonderful heroic Grandpa! I held his hand tightly as we returned from the Drumbuck Arms to Lomond View.

  When we entered the house Mama was in the lobby, studying a postcard which had just come in, that first day of October, by the afternoon delivery.

  “Grandma is coming back to-morrow.” She turned to me. “She’s looking forward to seeing you, Robert.”

  The news affected Grandpa strangely. He did not speak but gave Mama his particular grimace, as though he had swallowed something sour, and began to climb the stairs.

  With her face upturned Mama seemed to offer consolation. “Would you like an egg to your tea, Father?”

  “No, Hannah, no.” The intrepid fighter of Zulus spoke despondently. “After that, I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  He went upstairs. I could hear the melancholy twang of the springs as he flung himself into his chair.

  Whatever Grandpa’s reaction, mine was one of expectation. On the following day, which was Saturday, the dramatic sound of a cab drew me, running, to the window.

  Excitedly, I watched Grandma lower her head and, treasuring her purse against her black-beaded cape with one hand, pulling her skirt from her elastic-sided boots with the other, climb carefully from the cab. The driver seemed out of humour. When Grandma paid him he flung up his arms; but at last, as though acknowledging defeat, consented to carry in the carpet bags. Grandpa had departed for a walk, silently, at an unusual hour, but Kate and Murdoch came out deferentially to welcome her. In the lobby Mama was calling: “Robie! Where are you? Come and help your great-grandma with her things.”

  I ran out and, in the general confusion, began to carry the lighter packages to the top landing, glancing hurriedly yet with shy interest at Grandma. She was a big flat-footed woman, bigger than my grandpa, with a long, firm, yellowish, deeply wrinkled face, nicely set off by the immaculate white frill which lined her black mutch. Her hair, still dark, was parted in the middle, and at the corner of her long, seamed upper lip was a brown mole stain from which sprouted a tuft of crinkling whiskers. As she talked to Mama, relating the events of her journey, she displayed strong, discoloured teeth which, however, were somewhat unmanageable and made little clicking noises.

  Upstairs the secret door was open and while Grandma refreshed herself with a cup of tea downstairs, I sat on a bag in the doorway, satisfying, the curiosity which I had so long experienced. It was a neat and well-ordered room, smelling of camphor and beeswax, two hooked rugs making oval islands upon the stained boards, and between them a heavy mahogany bed with turned legs and thick magenta eiderdown, a gleaming chamber pot discreetly tucked beneath. In one corner was the sewing machine; a plush-backed rocking chair draped with an antimacassar waited expectantly at the window. Three coloured lithographs, magnificent and terrifying, hung upon the walls: “ Samson Destroying the Temple,” “Israelites Crossing the Red Sea,” “ The Last Judgment.” In a lugubrious ebony frame shaped like a tombstone, and near the door, where I could read it, hung a black-bordered poem, entitled “Auspicious Day,” praising Abraham for having taken Samuel Leckie to his bosom and inflicting such heavy sorrow on Samuel’s bereaved and beloved spouse.

  Grandma came up slowly, but steadily, pressing each stair firmly into its place, while I hung about against my will, magnetized, rather in the manner of those small fish which, by instinct rather than desire, gravitate submissively to escort the leviathans of the deep. She was inspecting her room to see if anything had been disturbed, moving the chairs a fraction of an inch, testing the treadle of the sewing machine with her foot, and all the time observing me with a serene yet penetrating eye.

  At last, not wholly satisfied, she shook her head and, opening her Gladstone carrying-bag, took out her spectacle case, a Bible, and a number of bottles of physic which she arranged, with the utmost precision, on the little table, covered with a lace doily, beside her bed. Then she turned and addressed me in her broad “ country” accent.

  “Have you been a good boy while I was away?”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, dear.” Her soberness yielded to a warmer note. “ You may as well help me to get things straight. I cannot leave this place a day without someone tampering and tinkering with it.”

  I helped her to unpack while she put away all her folded and laundered garments in a deep cupboard. Then handing me a flannel, and remarking that cleanliness was next to godliness, she set me to rub the fire brasses while, with a feather duster, which she took from the same cupboard, she began to flick the china dogs upon the mantelpiece.

  Pleased with my activity, Grandma further relaxed her strictness and bestowed on me a look of deep and meaningful solicitude. “You are a good boy, in spite of all. Your grandma has something nice for you.”

  From the top lefthand drawer of her chest she brought out a handful of the hard peppermint sweets known as “ imperials,” took one herself, and pressed the rest on me.

  “Suck, don’t crunch,” she advised. “They last longer that way.” She stroked my brow protectively: “ You’re going to be your grandma’s boy. You bide with me, my lamb. I’m taking you out for your tea.”

  True to her promise, Grandma kept me with her most of the day, conversing with me from time to time, even telling me something of herself. She came of a good country stock: the nephew with whom she had been staying was an Ayrshire potato farmer. Her husband had been the head timekeeper at the Levenford Boilerworks, a “saint” who had helped her to find grace. One never-to-be-forgotten day, as he crossed the yard, a ton of steel had dropped from a travelling crane on to his head. Poor Samuel! But he had gone to the Lord, and Marshall Brothers had behaved most handsomely: she drew a pension from the Works every quarter-day in life. She was independent, thank God, and could pay decently for her board and lodging.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, she told me to wash my face and hands. Half an hour later we set out for the village of Drumbuck.

  By this time Grandma’s austere and Christian spirit was having its effect on me, and in my desire to win her approbation I became serious, old-fashioned, even began primly to imitate her way of nodding her head. I was filled with a godly sense of importance as I walked beside her in all her “ braws,” for, although the day was warm, she had resumed the full state robes of her arrival, carrying, like a sceptre, her long tightly rolled umbrella with a gold and mother-of-pearl handle. No one dare shout after her.

  “Remember, dear,” she warned me as we drew near the little sweetshop between the horse trough and the smithy. “You are to behave nicely. Miss Minns is my bosom friend—we go to the same Meeting. Don’t make a noise when you drink your tea, and speak up when you are spoken to.”

  Little had I dreamed, when I pressed my face longingly against Miss Minns’s low greenish windowpanes, that I would so soon have the honour to be her guest. The door went ping as Grandma pushed and I followed in her wake, stepping down to the delightful dim interior of the little cave which smelled of peppermints, aniseed balls, scented soap, and tallow candles. Miss Minns, a small bent woman in black bombazine with steel spectacles on her forehead, was seated behind the counter at her knitting; but, as we entered, taken unawares, she gave out a startled exclamation of affection and surprise.

  “Good sakes, woman, you’re not back!”

  “Aye, aye, Tibbie, it’s me and no other.”

  Delighted to have caught her friend unprepared, Grandma, with unsuspected playfulness, submitted to, and returned, an affectionate greeting, interspersed with many effusive cries from Miss Minns.

  Then, hobbling from her rheumatism, Miss Minns led the way into the back shop where, very quickly, she laid out cups and saucers on the round table and set the kettle upon the fire, all the time giving her close attention to the account Grandma had launched into of her visit to Kilmarnock, which pertained largely to the “Meetings” she had attended.

  “Yes, woman.” Miss Minns sighed at the conclusion
in resigned and subtle flattery. “You have had a profitable time. I wish I had heard Mr. Dalgetty. But better you nor me.”

  Pouring the tea, she began to relate to Grandma everything which had taken place in her absence: the births and the burials and, though I did not then suspect it, the various pregnancies which had occurred. But presently, when these secular trivialities had been disposed of, there came a veiled silence, they glanced at me with the expression of two gourmands who, having exhausted the light dishes, now turn, with whetted appetites, to the main item of the repast.

  “He’s a fine boy,” Miss Minns said, openly. “ Take another piece of cake, my big man. It’s very wholesome.”

  I could not but feel complimented by this extra attention. Miss Minns had already given me, all to myself, a plate of Abernethy biscuits and an extra cushion for my chair, to raise me to the table. Then, finding that I did not drink my tea, she had fetched from the shop a bottle of delicious yellow aerated water named Iron Brew, with a label showing a strong man in a leopardskin lifting dumb-bells of tremendous weight.

  “Now, dear,” she said kindly. “Tell your grandma and me how you’ve been getting on. You’ve been with your grandpa a good deal?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. I was with him nearly all the time.”

  A meaning, mournful glance between the two ladies; then, in a tone which seemed to veil the forebodings of her spirit, Grandma asked:

  “And what did you do nearly all the time?”

  “Oh, lots of things,” I said rather grandly, reaching of my own accord for another Abernethy. “Played bowls with Mr. Boag. Hunted the Zulus. Gathered fruit in Mr. Dalrymple’s Nursery.… Grandpa had permission, of course, to send me through the hedge.” Flattered by their attention, I paid full homage to my grandpa, not forgetting our visits to the Drumbuck Arms, even mentioning the two tinkers whom Grandpa had liked in the High Street.

  In the pause which followed Grandma continued to regard me with unaffected commiseration. Then, with great discretion but firmly, as though resolved to know the worst, she began to probe into my more distant history, drawing from me an account of my life in Dublin. So tempered was her approach, I soon found myself giving forth, without a qualm, the full record of my upbringing.

  When I concluded the two women looked at each other, charged with a strange silence.

  “Well,” Miss Minns said at last, in a suppressed voice. “You know where you are, woman.”

  Grandma gravely inclined her head and glanced towards me. “Robert dear, run out and play a minute by the door. Miss Minns and I have something to discuss.”

  I said good-bye to Miss Minns, then stood by the horse trough in gathering uneasiness, until Grandma rejoined me. She did not speak during our return; although she held my arm with a kind of sober pity. Leading me immediately to her room, she closed the door and removed her cape.

  “Robert,” she said. “ Will you say a prayer with me?”

  “Oh, yes, Grandma,” I assured her with nervous fervour.

  As though her heart bled she took my hand, guided me to my knees, then got down heavily beside me, amidst the growing darkness of the room. Her supplication, full of confidence and devotion, was for my welfare. Agitated, my face drawn by anxiety, I was nevertheless moved by the steadfast and personal quality of the prayer, and my eyes filled with tears when Grandma, having begged forgiveness for a sinner, and unceasing patience for herself, commended me tenderly to Heaven. When she concluded she got up, smiling cheerfully, drew the blinds and lit the gas.

  “That suit you’re wearing, Robert … it’s a pure disgrace. What they would think of you at the Academy I do not know.” Summoning me, she deprecated the frayed shoddiness of the material between her finger and thumb. “To-morrow I’ll begin to run you up something on my machine. Fetch me the inch tape from my drawer.”

  While I stood very still she measured me from every angle, jotting down figures with a moistened stub of pencil on a brown paper pattern which she took from a copy of Weldon’s Home Dressmaker. Then she opened her cupboard, reflecting aloud: “I have a good serge petticoat somewhere. Just the thing!”

  While she rummaged there came a tap on the door.

  “Robie.” It was my grandpa’s voice outside. “Time for bed.”

  Grandma turned from the cupboard.

  “I will put Robert to bed.”

  “But he sleeps with me.”

  “No, he is sleeping with me.”

  There was a pause. Grandpa’s voice came through the door.

  “His nightshirt is in my room.”

  “I will provide him with a nightshirt.”

  Again silence, the silence of defeat, and in a moment I heard the sound of Grandpa’s slippers in retreat. I was now thoroughly alarmed, and must have shown it in my pallid face, for Grandma’s manner became calmer and more protective still. She undressed me, poured water from her ewer and made me wash, then, wrapping me in a flannel bodice, she helped me into the high bed. She sat down beside me, stroking my brow, as though facing a disagreeable task.

  “My poor boy.” She sighed with genuine compunction. “I want you to prepare yourself. Your grandpa never fought in any war. He has never been fifty miles beyond the county of Winton in all his life.”

  What was she saying? My pupils dilated in shocked incredulity.

  “It’s not my nature to speak ill of anyone,” she continued. “But this is a solemn duty which affects your future.” As her voice went on, my whole being revolted, I tried not to hear what she was saying, yet the words, from time to time, broke through relentlessly. “… A failure in all he did … thrown out of every situation … exciseman in the bonded warehouse … hand-to-mouth for years.… It was the end of his poor wife.… And then the drink … see it in his face … his nose. Even the company he keeps … Boag, three times a bankrupt, and Dickie, one foot in the poorhouse.… Now not a penny to his name … dependent on the charity of my son…”

  “No, no,” I cried, covering my ears with my hands and thrusting my head into the pillow.

  “You had to know, Robert.” She straightened the bedclothes. “He’s not the right influence for a growing boy. Don’t cry, my lamb. I’ll take care of you.”

  She waited patiently till I was composed, then rose, and declaring that she, too, was tired, she quoted: “ Early to bed, early to rise, makes us all healthy, wealthy, and wise,” then proceeded to take her clothes off.

  Fascinated, despite my desolation, I could not help but watch her. She began by removing her black mutch: the little black bonnet which sat on her bun of still brown hair. Then from her bosom she unpinned her thin gold watch, which she wound, carefully, and hung on a hook above the mantelpiece. Next to come off was the white shawl which kept warm her shoulders. A pause for unbottoning the front of her tight long-sleeved black bodice, then this, too, lay folded on the rocking chair. The slipbodies followed, white strips of cambric, perhaps four of them, the ends tired with tapes, until Grandma was seen to be encased in dark stays, which encircled her and rose high to the dark hollows of her armpits.

  At this point she paused to remove her teeth, with one swift, almost magical pass of her left hand, a feat of legerdemain which caused her face to collapse in staggering fashion. Her austere features sank into an agreeable softness. However, once the teeth had been placed in a tumbler of water by the bed, Grandma put on a white bed-cap, the ribbons of which, tied tight under her chin, seemed to restore, partly, the rigidity of her facial structure.

  Now she dropped and stepped out of her skirt, a process repeated with all her petticoats. The number of petticoats that Grandma wore became one of the great perplexities of my early life: first, a black alpaca, then three of white cotton, two of creamy flannel … but I never solved the ultimate and elusive mystery for at this point Grandma looked at me, sternly yet coyly.

  “Robert! Turn to the wall.”

  When I obeyed, I heard more stepping out, the snapping of whalebone; other sounds; then the gas went out and Grandma was
in beside me. She was a quiet and peaceful sleeper, but her feet, which she immediately placed against me, were very cold. Lying on my side in the darkness I fearfully studied her teeth as they grinned luminously at me from the bedside table: a heavy double set, of greenish colour, old-fashioned but immensely strong, with a powerful connecting spring. Grandpa had no such teeth; but I longed—oh, despite his wickedness I longed suddenly with all my heart to be back beside him.

  Chapter Five

  The old greystone Academy, with its high square clock tower, worn stone steps, long damp corridors, and hot classrooms filled with the smell of chalk dust, children, and illuminating gas, had for more than a hundred years exposed to the High Street its deep, dark archway, an entrance comparable, by my nervous fancy, to the opening in the mountain of Hamelin.

  On the very morning that I must pass through that opening, when I woke up filled with anxiety and excitement, Grandma informed me that my suit was ready. She led me, complacently, to the window where it was laid out, complete, on tissue paper, to surprise me.

  The first sight of my new suit, to which I had looked forward, so took me aback that I scarcely knew what to say. It was green, not a dark subdued green, but a gay and lively olive. True, as she treadled, I had seen this material piled on Grandma’s machine, but, in my innocence, I had assumed it to be the lining.

  “Slip it on,” she said, with pride.

  It was large, the jacket engulfed me, the wide breeches fell in straight lines like a pair of long trousers amputated below the knee.

  “Fine, fine.” Grandma was patting and pulling me here and there. “It covers you well. I made it for your growth.”

  “But the colour, Grandma?” I protested feebly.

  “Colour!” She removed a white basting thread, speaking from lips which compressed a pin. “What ails the colour? It’s wonderful stuff, stands by itself. It’ll never wear out.”