The Keys of the Kingdom (5 page)

‘I’m late, Willie!’ Francis kept his gaze intently on the skirting of the counter.

‘I was late myself … and I’ve to deliver these medicines for Father, bless him.’ Now that Willie had begun his medical curriculum at the Armstrong College, Dr Tulloch had, with solemn facetiousness, accredited him his assistant.

There was a pause. Then the older boy threw a secret glance towards his friend.

‘Have you decided?’

Francis’ gaze was still downcast. He nodded broodingly, his lips set. ‘ Yes.’

‘You’re right, Francis.’ Approval flooded Willie’s plain and stolid features. ‘I wouldn’t have stood it so long.’

‘I wouldn’t … either …’ Francis mumbled, ‘except for … well … my grandfather and you.’ His thin young face, concealed and sombre, reddened deeply as the last words came out with a rush.

Flushing in sympathy, Willie muttered: ‘I found out the train for you. There’s a through leaves Alstead every Saturday at six-thirty-five … Quiet. Here’s Dad.’ He broke off, with a warning glance, when the surgery door opened and Dr Tulloch appeared, showing his last patient out. As the doctor returned towards the boys, a brusque, bristling dark-skinned figure in pepper-and-salt tweeds, his bushy hair and glossy whiskers seemed to spark with sheer vitality. For one who bore the awful reputation of the town’s professed free-thinker, open adherent of Robert Ingersoll and Professor Darwin, he had a most disarming charm, and the look of one who would be useful in a sick-room. Because the hollows in Francis’ cheeks made him grave, he cracked a frightful joke. ‘ Well, my lad – that’s another one killed off! Oh, he’s not dead yet! Soon will be! Such a nice man too, leaves a large family.’ The boy’s smile was too drawn to please him. He cocked his clear, challenging eye, mindful of his own troubled boyhood: ‘Cheer up, young housemaid’s knee – it’ll all be the same in a hundred years.’ Before Francis could reply the doctor laughed briefly, thrust his hard square hat on the back of his head and began pulling on his driving gloves.

On his way out to his gig he called back: ‘Don’t fail to bring him for supper, Will. Hot prussic acid served at nine!’

An hour later, with the physic delivered, the two boys made their way in unspeaking comradeship towards Willie’s house, a large dilapidated villa facing the Green. As they talked in low voices of the daring promise of the day beyond tomorrow, Francis’ spirits lifted. Life never seemed so hostile in Willie Tulloch’s company. And yet, perversely, their friendship had begun in strife. After school, one day, larking down Castle Street with a dozen classmates, Willie’s gaze had strayed to the Catholic church, ugly but inoffensive, beside the gasworks. ‘Come on,’ he shouted, in animal spirits. ‘I’ve got sixpence. Let’s go in and get our sins forgiven!’ Then, glancing round, he saw Francis in the group. He reddened with healthy shame. He had not meant the stupid jibe, which would have passed unheeded if Malcom Glennie had not pounced on it and fanned it skilfully into the occasion for a fight.

Incited by the rest, Francis and Willie fought a bloodily indecisive battle on the Green. It was a good fight, rich in uncomplaining courage, and when the darkness stopped it, though neither was the victor, each had clearly had enough. But the spectators, with the cruelty of youth, refused to let the quarrel rest. On the next night, after school, the contestants were brought together, whetted with the taunt of cowardice and set to batter each other’s already battered head. Again, bloody, spent, yet dogged, neither would concede the victory. Thus for a dreadful week they were matched, like gamecocks, to make sport for their baser fellows. The inhuman conflict, motiveless and endless, became, for each, a nightmare. Then, on the Saturday, the two met unexpectedly, face to face, alone. An agonizing moment followed, the earth opened, the sky melted and each had an arm round the other’s neck, Willie blubbering: ‘I don’t want to fight you, I like ye, man!’ – while Francis, knuckling his purple eyes, wept back: ‘Willie, I like you best in the whole of Darrow!’

They were halfway across the Green, a public open space carpeted by dingy grass, with a forlorn bandstand in the centre, a rusty iron urinal at the far end and a few benches, mostly without backs, where pale-faced children and loafers smoked and argued noisily, when suddenly Francis saw, with a tightening of his skin, that they must pass his grandfather’s meeting. At the end farthest from the urinal a small red banner had been planted bearing the words in tarnished gilt:
‘Peace on Earth to Men of Goodwill.’
Opposite the banner stood a portable harmonium furnished with a campstool on which Mrs Glennie sat, wearing her victim’s air, with Malcolm, glumly clasping a hymn-book, beside her. Between the banner and the harmonium on a low wooden stand, surrounded by some thirty persons, was Holy Dan.

As the boys drew up on the fringe of the gathering Daniel had finished his opening prayer and, with his uncovered head thrown back, was beginning his address. It was a gentle and beautiful plea. It expressed Daniel’s burning conviction, bared his simple soul. His doctrine was based on brotherhood, the love of one another and of God. Man should help his fellow man, bring peace and goodwill to earth. If only he could lead humanity to that ideal! He had no quarrel with the churches but chastised them mildly: it was not the form which mattered but the fundamentals, humility and charity. Yes, and tolerance! It was worthless to voice these sentiments if one did not practise them.

Francis had heard his grandfather speak before, and felt a throb of dogged sympathy for these views which made Holy Dan the laughing-stock of half the town. Now, edged by his wild intention, his heart swelled in understanding and affection, in longing for a world free of cruelty and hate. Suddenly, as he stood listening, he saw Joe Moir, the skip of his riveting squad at the Shipyard, sidle up the outskirts of the meeting. Accompanying Joe was the gang that hung about the Darrow Vaults, with an armament of bricks, decayed fruit, and oily waste thrown out from the boiler works. Moir was a ribald likeable giant, who, when drunk, gleefully pursued salvation rallies and other outdoor conclaves. He fingered a fistful of dripping waste and shouted: ‘ Hey! Dan! Give us a song and dance!’

Francis’ eyes dilated in his pale face. They were going to break up the meeting! He had a vision of Mrs Glennie, clawing a ripe tomato from her splattered hair, of Malcom, with a greasy rag plastering his hateful face. His being exulted with a wild ecstatic joy.

Then he saw Daniel’s face: still unconscious of the danger, lit by a strange intensity, every word throbbing, born of unquenchable sincerity, from the depths of his soul.

He started forward. Without knowing how, or why, he found himself at Moir’s side, restraining his elbow, pleading breathlessly: ‘Don’t Joe! Please don’t! We’re friends, aren’t we?’

‘Hell!’ Moir glanced down, his boozy scowl melting to friendly recognition. ‘For Christ’s sake, Francis!’ Then, slowly, ‘ I forgot he was your grandpa.’ A desperate pause. Then, commandingly, to his followers: ‘Come on lads, we’ll go up to the Square and take it out on the Hallelujas!’

As they moved off the harmonium wheezed with life. No one but Willie Tulloch knew why the thunderbolt had not fallen.

A minute later, entering his house, he asked, baffled yet impressed: ‘Why did you, Francis?’

Francis answered shakily: ‘I don’t know … There’s something in what he says … I’ve had enough hating these last four years. My father and mother wouldn’t have got drowned if people hadn’t hated him …’ He broke off, inarticulate, ashamed.

Silently, Willie led the way to the living room, which, after the outer dusk, glowed with light and sound and a prodigal untidy comfort. It was a long high maroon-papered chamber, asprawl with broken red plush furniture, the chairs castorless, the vases cracked and glued together, the bell pull tugged out, a litter of vials, labels, pillboxes on the mantlepiece and of toys, books and children upon the worn ink-stained Axminster. Though it was shockingly near nine o’clock none of the Tulloch family was abed. Willie’s seven young brothers and sisters, Jean, Tom, Richard, – a list so complex even their father admitted to forgetting it, – were diversely occupied in reading, writing, drawing, scuffling and swallowing their supper of hot bread and milk while their mother Agnes Tulloch, a dreamy voluptuous woman with her hair half down and her bosom open, had picked the baby from his crib upon the hearth and, having removed its steaming napkin, now placidly refreshed the nuzzling bare-bottomed infant at her creamy, fire-lit breast.

She smiled her welcome, unperturbed, to Francis. ‘ Here you are then, boys. Jean, set out more plates and spoons. Richard, leave Sophia alone. And Jean, dear, a fresh diaper for Sutherland from the line! Also, see that the kettle’s boiling for your father’s toddy. What lovely weather we are having. Dr Tulloch says there is much infammation about though. Be seated, Francis. Thomas, didn’t your father tell you to keep away from the others!’ The doctor was always bringing home some disorder: measles one month, chicken-pox the next. Now Thomas, aged six, was the victim. His poll shorn and smelling of carbolic, he was happily disseminating ringworm through the tribe.

Squeezed on the crowded twanging sofa beside Jean, at fourteen the image of her mother, with the same creamy skin, the same placid smile, Francis supped his bread and milk flavoured with cinnamon. He was still upset from his recent outburst; there was an enormous lump inside his chest, his mind was a maze of confusion. Here was another problem for his aching brain. Why were these people so kind, happy, and contented? Reared by an impious rationalist to deny, or rather to ignore, the existence of their God, they were damned, hell fire already licked their feet.

At quarter-past nine the crunch of the dogcart’s wheels was heard on the gravel. Dr Tulloch strode in, a shout went up, he was at once the centre of an attacking mob. When the tumult stilled the doctor had bussed his wife heartily, was in his chair, a glass of toddy in his hand, slippers on his feet, the infant Sutherland goggling on his knee.

Catching Francis’ eye, he raised his steaming tumbler in friendly satire.

‘Didn’t I tell you there was poison going! Strong drink is raging – eh, Francis?’

Seeing his father in high humour, Willie was tempted to relate the story of the prayer meeting. The doctor slapped his thigh, smiling at Francis. ‘Good for you, my wee Roman Voltaire. I will disagree to the death with what you say and defend with my life your right to say it! Jean, stop making sheep’s eyes at the poor laddie. I thought ye wanted to be a nurse! You’ll have me a grandfather before I’m forty. Eh, well –’ He sighed suddenly, toasting his wife. ‘ We’ll never get to heaven, woman – but at least we get our meat and drink.’

Later, at the front door, Willie gripped Francis by the hand.

‘Good luck … Write to me when you’re there.’

At five next morning, while all was still dark, the Shipyard hooter sounded, low and dolorous, over the cowering dreariness of Darrow. Half senseless with sleep, Francis tumbled out of bed and into his dungarees, stumbled downstairs. The frigid morning, pale yet murky, met him like a blow as he joined the march of silent shivering figures, hurrying with bent head and huddled shoulders towards the Shipyard gates.

Over the weighbridge, past the checker’s window, inside the gates … Gaunt spectres of ships rose dimly in their stocks around him. Beside the half-formed skeleton of a new ironclad Joe Moir’s squad was mustering: Joe and the assistant plater, the holders-on, the two other rivet-boys and himself.

He lit the charcoal fire, blew the bellows beneath the forge. Silently, unwillingly, as in a dream, the squad set itself to work. Moir lifted his sledge, the hammers rang, swelled and strengthened throughout the Shipyard.

Holding the rivets, white-hot from the brazier, Francis shinned up the ladder and thrust them quickly through the bolt-holes in the frame, where they were hammered flat and tight, annealing the great sheets of metal which formed the ship’s hull. The work was fierce: blistering by the brazier, freezing on the ladders. The men were paid by piece work. They wanted rivets fast, faster than the boys could give them. And the rivets must be heated to the proper incandescence. If they were not malleable the men threw them back at the boys. Up and down the ladder, to and from the fires, scorched, smoky, with inflamed eyes, panting, perspiring. Francis fed the platers all day long.

In afternoon the work went faster: the men seemed careless, straining every nerve, unsparing of their bodies. The closing hour passed in a swimming daze with ear drums tense for the final hooter.

At last, at last it sounded. What blessed relief! Francis stood still, moistening his cracked lips, deafened by the cessation of all sound. On the way home, grimed and sweaty, through his tiredness, he thought: Tomorrow … tomorrow. That strange glitter returned to his eye, he squared his shoulders.

That night he took the wooden box down from its hiding place in the disused oven and changed his hoard of silver and coppers, saved with agonizing slowness, into half a sovereign. The golden coin, clutched deep in his trouser pocket, fevered him. With a queer, exalted flush he asked Mrs Glennie for a needle and thread. She snubbed him, then threw him suddenly a veiled appraising glance.

‘Wait! There’s a reel in the top drawer – by that card of needles. You can take it.’ She watched him go out.

In the privacy of his bare and wretched room above the bakehouse he folded the coin in a square of paper, sewed it firm and tight inside the lining of his coat. He had a sense of glad security as he came down to give her back the thread.

The following day, Saturday, the Shipyard closed at twelve. The thought that he would never enter these gates again so elated him that at dinner he could scarcely eat; he felt his flushed restlessness more than enough to raise some sharp inquiry from Mrs Glennie. To his relief she made no comment. As soon as he left the table, he edged out of the house, slipped down East Street, then fairly took to his heels.

Outside the town, he slipped into a brisk walk. His heart was singing within him. It was pathetic, commonplace: the time-worn flight of all unhappy childhood. Yet for him it was the road to freedom. Once he was in Manchester he could find work at the cotton-mills, he was sure, doubly sure. He covered the fifteen miles to the railway Junction in four hours. It was striking six o’clock as he entered Alstead Station.