‘What idiocy have you been up to now?’ she asked. ‘Do you know that your mother’s crying in the kitchen?’
‘Leave me alone,’ said Tom. But now he spoke in a merely sulky voice.
Jean looked at the bedclothes piled on the sofa: ‘A fine mess you’ve made. Are you going to sleep here?’ Then she turned to him, her voice changing, and asked: ‘Tom, what has happened?’
‘Oh, it’s no business of yours.’ He went across to the window, and looking out said: ‘Well, if you want to know, Mansie’s walking out a lady that used to be a great visitor here at one time. I caught them coming out of the Queen’s Park.’
‘What? Not Helen Williamson?’
‘Yes, Helen Williamson.’
‘But it’s absurd! It’s impossible!’
‘Well, I saw them. Haven’t I told you?’
Jean was silent for a moment, then she asked: ‘Did they see you?’
‘They were too much occupied with each other.’
She stood looking at him: ‘But what’s to be done now?’
‘That’s not my affair. I’m going to ship on a liner tomorrow.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. You know you’ve got to consider your mother. But I never thought Mansie was such a terrible fool as that!’
‘Well, do you expect me to live here after this?’
Jean stood thinking. Presently she said: ‘Go for a walk. And I’ll make your bed and put this room in some order.’
She began at once, turning her back on him. At the door he said: ‘At any rate, it wasn’t my fault this time.’
‘Who says it was your fault?’ Then she burst out: ‘That woman will be a curse to the both of you! I never liked her.’
‘It’s his fault, not hers.’
‘Do you stick up for her still? But I don’t deny that it’s Mansie’s fault. I’ll have to tell your mother, I suppose.’
Tom walked rapidly up Victoria Road. But when he came to the park gates again his rage met him like a wave and turned him automatically in the opposite direction from the one that Mansie and Helen had taken. With his mother and Jean there he would never be able to get back at that creeper. Velvet-heeled creeper! Scented velvet-heeled creeper! Rows of black, spiked railings spun past him, and he struck at them with his stick. Like a prison, these neat streets and numbered houses and genteel railings. Why had his father hauled him back that time when he had tried to run off to sea? He had actually got to Blackness, was on the boat, tucked away all safe in the forecastle; and then his father came, the very skin at the root of his nose white with anger; and he had got out of the ship again and into the cart, and his father had driven him home to the farm, five hopeless miles. He had been sixteen then – a fellow was far too much at the mercy of everybody at sixteen! – and then his father had had his first heart attack, and that had put a stop to all hope of running away to sea. And when his father died there was his mother to look after, for Mansie had done a bunk to Glasgow long before that: the creeper always knew how to sneak out of things. No wonder he had taken to drink when they had gone to Blackness after his father’s death; he knew every stone in the streets and hated every one of them; but when you got drunk your nose wasn’t brought up against them at every turn; it seemed to give you some hope. Oh, why hadn’t they let him go to sea? They hadn’t known what they were doing.
He was walking now through a wide park dotted with groups of young men in shirt-sleeves playing football. And as if in response to his release from the constriction of the rows of railed houses, he saw himself again, as he had often seen himself, standing at the prow of an ocean-going ship in the solitary morning watch, standing bare-footed and with uncovered head in the wide flapping trousers and blue jersey of a sailor, a cigarette between his lips, a foreign look, the look of one who has seen many lands, on his face. The circle of the sea horizon rose and sank with a slow turning motion like a great coin lazily spinning, and within that ring of danger he was secure, for danger itself was a shield, turning aside all that was equivocal and treacherous and creeping. Yes, that was the life for him; but his father had not known and his mother would never know what a thirst a fellow could have for the sea, so that he seemed to choke on dry land, choke as if a dry clod were rammed down his throat. The sea, or the Wild West with a revolver at your side, some place where you knew your friends and your enemies, knew where you stood.
But suddenly, while he was still in mid-ocean, the turn of Helen’s neck as she looked up at Mansie rose before him. Damn and blast her! It was as if she had given him a blow between the eyes, and he, lying on his back in the gutter, were asking her in pure astonishment why she had done that. And he would have given up everything for her. How good he had felt at that party, the first evening they had met! But he mustn’t think of that. Still, when she wouldn’t tell him her address, by God she had been perfectly right! Better for him if he had never found it out. A damned fool, too, to have wandered round Langside every evening that week in the frost and cold, among all these new streets, great blocks of redstone they were, with genteel railed gardens in front. Of course he hadn’t met her there. But on the Sunday he had got up good and early and gone to the church she attended. Well, he had asked for his medicine pretty thoroughly, right enough. He had looked all round the church, but couldn’t find her. He might have given it up as a bad job then; but no, he had to wait on the pavement when the service was over, and after a while out she came. He had hardly dared to step up to her, the soft fool; he didn’t know at that time that she was the sort that would kiss and canoodle with anybody. But it was all easier than he had expected, far too damned smooth and easy altogether, and she agreed to go for a walk in the park with him without winking an eyelash. Might as well have given him her address at the first go off; but that was like her. And then it was a long time before he plucked up his courage and got it out – a nice sunny day it was, after the frost – but out it came at last: ‘I love you.’ And his voice had trembled: was there ever such a fool? It had made her catch her breath all the same; but then she had replied in that superior way of hers: ‘How can you tell that? You don’t know me.’ But he thought he knew her better than anybody had ever known a girl, and that began it. Yet even then he hadn’t dared to touch her, or to kiss her, for weeks and weeks. Still, that had been the happiest time he had had with her. Better if the thing had always stayed at that stage. For her kisses drove a fellow frantic, and she didn’t seem to know it. Flung herself at you and thought she could go on doing that till the cows came home; kissing and nothing more. Thus far and no farther. And after it was over she would just pat her hat to rights again, looking as superior and genteel as ever, and that was that. How could he have stood it? No wonder he got violent that night in Maxwell Park; he was beyond himself, he couldn’t help it. But then he had crept and crawled before her, licked her boots, told her he was a waster, and promised never to offend again. And after all it wasn’t any use, for she kept as stiff as a poker, never gave him another chance, took no pity on a fellow. And now she was kissing and canoodling with that creeper. By God, if he had guessed that would ever happen he would have known what to do; he would have paid no attention to her objections; that was how to treat tarts of her kind. A proper soft mark he had been.
Now he was among streets again. His anger, which had winged his feet, now fell like the sudden ceasing of a wind. He felt tired; a drink would do him good. He pushed open the swing-door of a pub. As he sat drinking, and the comforting equivocality of alcohol spread through his mind, he gave himself over more and more completely to the thought that he was a waster, as though it were a consoling thought. It didn’t matter what happened to a poor devil like him; let them kiss and canoodle. But then – for even a waster must take some measures of defence against his enemies – he suddenly saw that he must get back before Mansie; it was a point of honour, a point of honour that a creeper mightn’t understand; but it would be indecent if he wasn’t home