“That’s great, Sammy. But, man… where’s Annie?”
Sam jerked his head towards the outer darkness. The etiquette was perfect. Annie was waiting outside. Annie knew her place. Annie was not sure of her welcome. David saw it alclass="underline" the obscure figure of Annie Macer strolling quietly, contentedly, outside the house waiting until she be judged worthy to enter. He cried instantly:
“Tell her to come in at once, you big idiot. Go on! Fetch her in this minute.”
Sammy’s grin broadened.
Then Jenny, all dressed to go out, walked into the room. Sammy, on his way to the door, hesitated, not quite sure, gazing at Jenny, who advanced on him with her best company manners.
“This is a great pleasure,” Jenny remarked, smiling ever so politely. “And such a stranger too. What a shame you’ve caught David and me just going out.”
“But Sammy’s dropped in to see us, Jenny,” David broke in. “And he’s brought Annie. She’s outside.”
Jenny’s eyebrows went up; she paused for just the appropriate time; smiled sweetly at Sam.
“Isn’t that a pity! Too bad, really it is, that you should have caught us on the way to the concert. We’ve promised to meet some friends in Tynecastle and really we couldn’t disappoint them. You must look in another time.”
Sammy clung tenaciously to his grin.
“Ah, that’s all right. Annie and me never have much to do. We can come any old time.”
“You’re not to go, Sammy,” burst out David. “Fetch Annie in. And both of you stop and have a cup of tea.”
Jenny threw a pained look towards the clock.
“Not at all, lad.” Sammy was already on his way to the door. “Aw wouldna stop you an’ the missus from goin’ out for anything. Annie an’ me’ll just take a stroll up the Avenue. Good night to ye both.”
Right to the end Sammy’s grin persisted; but beneath it, David saw that Sammy was bitterly hurt. Out Sammy would go to Annie and mutter:
“Come on, lass, we’re not good enough for the likes o’ them. Since our Davey’s turned schoolmaster he fancies himself too much, I’m thinking.”
David winced, tom between his desire to run after Sammy and his promise to take Jenny to the concert. But Sammy was already gone.
Jenny and David caught the six-ten for Tynecastle, a slow, crowded train which stopped at every station. They went to the Eldon Hall. The tickets cost two shillings each, the cheaper seats being filled when they reached the hall. They sat through three hours of steamy performance.
Jenny adored it, clapping with the rest for encores, but to David it was ghastly. He tried not to be superior; tried hard to like it; but the entire concert party defeated him. Oh! They’re first rate, Jenny kept breathing enthusiastically. But they were not first rate. They were fourth rate: the leftovers from holiday pierrot troupes, the comedian relying mainly upon his mother-in-law and Colin Loveday upon a fruity vibrato and a hand laid soulfully upon his heart. David thought of Sally’s little performance in the parlour of Scottswood Road, so vastly superior to this; he thought of his books lying unopened; he thought of Sammy and Annie Macer strolling arm in arm down the Avenue.
When the performance was over Jenny nestled up to him as they came out of the hall.
“It’s an hour till the last train, David; we must take that, it’s such a quick one… first stop Sleescale. Let’s run round to the Percy Grill for something. Joe always used to take me there. Only a port or that, we can’t wait at the station.”
At the Percy they each had a port. Jenny was delighted to be back, recognised familiar faces, chaffed the napkin-stuffed waiter whom, recalling a joke of the red-nosed comedian, she called Chawles.
“A scream, wasn’t he?” she added, giggling.
The port made things a little different for David, outlines less incisive, colours rosier, atmosphere a trifle hazy. He smiled across at Jenny.
“You’re a reckless imp,” he said, “and what an influence on a poor man! I see I shall have to take to coaching young Barras after all.”
“That’s the way to look at it, darling.” She approved warmly, instantly. She enticed him with her eyes, pressed her knee against his under the table. And with a gay daring she ordered Chawles to bring her another port.
After that they had to run quickly for the train. Quickly, quickly, they caught it in a whirl, flung themselves into an empty smoker.
“Oh dear! Oh dear!” Jenny giggled, panting. “That was a scream, David darling, wasn’t it now?” She paused, recovered her breath, saw that they were alone, remembered with a queer catch deep down in her that the train did not stop until Sleescale… another half-hour at least. She liked queer places, always had, even with Joe. Suddenly she snuggled up close to him: “You’ve been so good to me, David, I can’t thank you enough. Pull down the blinds, David… it’s cosier that way.”
He looked at her doubtfully, closely, as she lay in his arms; her eyes were shut — under the lids they seemed full; her pale lips were moist and a little apart as if vaguely smiling; her breath held the generous fume of port; her body was soft and very warm.
“Go on,” she murmured. “Pull down the blinds. All the blinds.”
“No, Jenny… wait, Jenny…”
The train jolted a little; shook up and down as it took some point on the track. He rose and pulled down all the blinds.
“That’s wonderful, David.”
Afterwards she lay against him; she fell asleep; she snored gently. He stared straight in front of him, a curious look upon his set face. The carriage reeked of stale pipes, port and engine smoke; someone had thrown orange peel upon the floor. Outside it was black as pitch. The wind howled, battered the heavy rain against the carriage window. The train thundered on.
EIGHTEEN
At the beginning of April, when David had been coaching Arthur Barras at the Law for close on three months, he received a message from his father. Harry Kinch, a small boy from the Terraces, brother of that little Alice who had died of pneumonia nearly seven years before, brought the note to David at New Bethel Street school one morning. Dear David will you come up the Wansbeck — trouting Saturday yours Dad. It was clumsily written in copying-ink pencil on the inside of an old envelope.
David was deeply touched. His father still wished to go fishing with him as in those days when he had taken him, a little boy, up the Wansbeck stream! The thought made him happy. For ten days Robert had been out the pit with a flare-up of tubercular pleurisy — he passed it off lightly as “inflammation”—but he was up now and about. Saturday would be his last free day; he wished David to spend it with him. The invitation came like a peace offering straight from his father’s heart.
Standing at his desk in the humming class-room, David’s thoughts flashed swiftly back over these past months. He had gone to the Law against his own inclination, partly because of Jenny’s importunities, certainly because they needed the extra money. But it had upset his father greatly. And, indeed, he felt it strangely unreal himself, that he should now be on familiar terms with the Barrases, who had always figured in his mind as apart from him and his life. He reflected. Aunt Carrie, for instance, so curious and worried about him at the start, inclined to look at him as she did people who came into the house with muddy boots or at Ramage’s bill when she thought he had overcharged her for the sirloin. Her nearsighted eyes had worn that worried distrustfulness for quite a while.
But the look had faded from Aunt Carrie’s eyes in time. She had “taken” to David in the end and would send up hot milk and biscuits to the old schoolroom about nine-o’clock when Arthur and David were due to finish their work.