Swords and Crowns and Rings (16 page)

So Jackie returned to Kingsland, arriving at one in the morning and having to awaken his parents to let him in. His mother, mop-haired, flushed with sleep and alarm, could not be temporised with.

‘Something's wrong, what is it?' she kept asking stubbornly. ‘Have you been sacked? You gotta tell me, Jackie!'

‘Can't you see the boy's just about knocked out?' protested the Nun. ‘Let him sleep. Whatever it is, it'll keep to the morning,'

Reluctantly she agreed, going back to bed, pretending to sleep.

She jabbed an elbow into the collapsed form of her husband.

‘You! Nerves of steel! You great vegetable!'

Jerry turned, threw a leg over her, pinioning her to the bed. His snores took on new life, resonant, majestic. She lay there, steaming with anger and anxiety, thinking. By the time morning came she had worked it all out.

‘They been chiacking you, haven't they? Them squareheads!'

She stood foursquare in front of him, flushed and moist with love and accusation. She still wore her greying hair long, skewered into a lump rather than a bun. She looked, all of a sudden, a little shapeless and floppy.

‘Don't you lie to me, John Luke Hanna! Tell the truth and shame the devil.'

During the dark, cold journey back to Kingsland Jackie had indeed plotted out some sort of story about his precipitate return home. But before his mother's observant eyes it fled from his brain. She struck at once at his hesitation.

‘I knew it! What did they say, what did they do to you?'

After a while he answered, ‘I don't want to tell you, Mum, so I won't.'

She raged, wept, abused Jerry's sister and her children. The Nun listened, disturbed and silent. At last, when she stopped yelling and gulping to look at him helpless and smeared, he put an arm around her shoulders. ‘I'm real sorry it's turned out like this, love, but it's not the end of the world. Jackie will tell us about it when he's ready.'

Going early to bed that evening, Jackie was amazed to see Cushie's window light up. Surely it was not possible that she should be home? Eagerly he watched, and saw her fair head illumined by the gaslight as she pulled down the blind.

‘What's Cushie doing at home?' he asked next morning. His mother said impatiently, ‘I don't know. Think that high and mighty mother of hers talks to me? I heard she was home to study for her music examination or something. I don't know...Jackie—was you sacked? Because, no shame in that if you was. But talk about it, will you? Say something!'

‘No, I wasn't sacked,' said Jackie. ‘I left. And I don't want to talk about it, so get off my back, Mum.'

Her squawk of indignation coincided with the postman's whistle. The Nun entered the living-room.

‘Well,' he said, ‘here's a letter from my sister Eva.'

He sat down and read it in a leisurely way. Jackie felt that if Aunt Eva had described the extent of his mortification he would never be able to look his parents in the eyes again.

‘Aren't I going to read it?' burst out Mrs MacNunn.

‘I'll read it out to you both,' said Jerry placidly.

Jackie could hear Mrs Linz's nervous, placating tone in every sentence. She was all apologies, all concern for the poor little nephew of whom she had been so fond. She admitted that the boys had come home drunk and had manhandled him because they thought he had punched poor Theo, who had a silver plate in his head. It was all a misunderstanding; Jackie was so touchy, things being as they were with him, and he had taken it all too seriously. The boys were only skylarking. Hof was very keen for him to come back, for Jackie was such a willing worker. If Jerry would wire, they'd be real pleased to meet the train. And she concluded with inquiries after Margaret's health and fond good wishes to everyone.

‘Was that it?' demanded Mrs MacNunn.

‘More or less,' said Jackie.

‘Them big coots,' said Jerry, relieved. ‘I don't suppose they know their own strength. Made it a bit too willing, did they?'

‘I'm not going back there.' Jackie glared defiantly at Jerry.

Jerry was troubled. He had not seen his sister Eva for many years. He could recall her only as a young woman, thin as a whitebait, with scared, shifty eyes.

He was about to say that they ought to forget all about it for a while, let things simmer down, when without warning his wife let fly.

‘Not going back, my foot!' she cried. ‘Jobs aren't that plentiful that you can afford to throw one away.'

A customer rang the shop bell and, swearing under his breath, the Nun went to attend to him.

Mrs MacNunn splashed out a cup of tea for herself, and sat down to read Eva Linz's letter. Jackie waited in dread and defiance to hear her comments, for she was working up to something, he could see it in the very way she breathed.

‘What's she like, your Auntie Eva?'

‘Little. Skinny.'

‘But she was all right to you, like?'

‘I guess so,' said Jackie sulkily. How to explain to his mother the sneaking meannesses of his Aunt Eva? It would be like trying to explain a cat to a dog.

‘And this girl, Maida?'

‘You pronounce it like Mida,' said Jackie. ‘She's all right. Shy. Fair hair, tied back.'

‘Bugger her hair,' exploded his mother. She looked at him imploringly. ‘Jackie, you've got to go back.'

Jackie began to say, ‘Like hell I will', but she rushed over him with words.

‘This is the first time you've ever given up on anything. A few years ago you'd have died rather than be licked, driven out of a place the way you've been this time. All right, so they picked on you...'

Jackie tried to interrupt, but she was volcanic.

‘You been picked on many times, and you always stood up for yourself. You had self-respect. That's what your Dad and me have been drumming into you all these years. A wee fellow can have as much self-respect as a big one, and by God he needs it more!'

Jackie jumped up, face crimson, banged his big forehead on the top rail of the chair, cried, ‘Will you shut your mouth, for Christ's sake?'

‘Your Dad and I raised you to be a young bull,' she said. ‘And here you are, run away home like a baby.'

‘Will you mind your own business!' he shouted.

‘Since when haven't you been my business, then, Jackie?' she asked.

He felt as though rage had placed a garrotte around his throat. He croaked, ‘You've not an idea of what they did to me!' and was glad of it, for he could never have told her, or the Nun either, come to that. The things that had been done to him were not likely to have been done to anyone of ordinary size: that was the shame of it, that was the wound. He leapt past her and tore upstairs, slamming his door as he had never slammed it in his life.

The Nun, who had returned from the shop, gazed at her flabbergasted.

‘Well,' she blazed, ‘what are you gawping at me for, like a dying duck itself?'

Then she wailed, ‘Oh, Jerry, it's come over me all of a sudden that if we let him give in this time he may never have the guts again to fight the world. God knows what them Linzes did to him...but he can't be allowed to go on feeling that they've won, don't you see?'

‘Does he feel like that, Peg?'

‘Of course he does, you bonehead. Haven't you eyes in your head? Oh, I could kill him!'

The Nun regarded her quietly.

‘You're not half a one for waterworks,' he said. ‘Pints you must have spouted this morning. Will you knock it off and have your breakfast like a dear woman? Then you'll feel better and we'll talk some sense.'

‘You will talk about it with me, then?' she snuffled.

‘Sure I will,' he said temperately. ‘Now go and wash your face. It looks like an ape's behind and I can't put up with it for another minute.'

‘Ah, God love you, Jerry,' she said. ‘You're a blessing to me, and I couldn't live five minutes without you.'

Jerry sat down and rubbed his leg meditatively. There was something in what she had said about Jackie. He was reminded keenly of the young soldiers, mere pups they were, deafened, blinded by shellfire, not wanting to do more than cuddle together at the bottom of a trench with their arms over their heads, and that sergeant punching, kicking, screaming, cursing...‘Get out there, you effing baboons, or you'll still be here when the Boers come to cut your throats...' and a lot more of the same. And he'd got them moving, too, and into safety somehow, though he'd got killed himself by a sniper.

But he thought he'd wait a day or two, till the boy cooled down, saw things straighter, more sensibly.

Deep in Jackie's soul there was a burning desire to let the Linzes know they hadn't driven him out, that it took more than a gang of half-baked hillbillies to take the sting out of John Luke Hanna. He knew perfectly well, in spite of Auntie Eva's letter, that this was what they thought. A mad rage seized him at the phantom sound of their laughter; he could have ground his teeth. He wanted the farmhouse to burn down, an epidemic disease to strike the whole damn lot of them except Hof and Maida and perhaps that creep Ellie. And even while he was seething and spitting within his heart, he knew that whatever the Linzes said was right: they
had
chased the little man out, like a cur dog.

He had never hated anyone before. Hate made him sick; it buzzed in his ears like a disgusting insect. Because of it he could not hear what the world was singing. The spring shone all about, but the air inside his mind was still cold and sodden. He was tainted. That's what the Linzes had done to him, all except Maida.

He felt he had to see Cushie, to settle himself, get his mind up the right way again.

He knocked at the Moys' back door, angry with himself for being nervous. It was the anticipated appearance of Mrs Moy that disturbed him.

But instead of Mrs Moy, Cushie appeared, wearing a blue apron. When she saw him, colour rushed into her face.

‘Goodness!' she said. ‘I thought you were the egg man.'

‘No,' said Jackie foolishly. They stared at each other. The sweetest expression illumined Cushie's face.

She said, ‘When I came back home this time, and you weren't in Kingsland! The first time! I always had you to come back to, before.'

‘I didn't like to write,' said Jackie, ‘because of everything.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know.'

‘Where's your Mum?' asked Jackie.

‘She's not here,' said Cushie. ‘She took the opportunity of my being home for a week to go off to Ghinni Junction with Olwyn. The hospital's got some new inhalation machine, and she thought it was a chance to try it. Nobody's here, Jackie! Come inside, come on.'

Cushie led the way up the Turkey-carpeted hall.

‘We're not going to the drawing-room!' protested Jackie. ‘She wouldn't like it, Cush.'

‘Nonsense,' said Cushie with bold airiness. ‘Daddy's at the Bank, there's no one here but me, and I'm the hostess.'

She took off her apron and skidded it down the hall.

‘I've been keeping house for Daddy,' she said, ‘and it's been fun.'

She flourished open the drawing-room door; its odour of brass polish, lavender furniture oil, and Mr Moy's occasional Turkish cigarettes, rushed out at Jackie. He hung back, but Cushie plumped upon the faded seagreen velvet of the sofa, spread her white arm along its curving back, smiled at him.

He stood beside her, stroking the thick, amber door-knocker plait that hung down over her white radianta blouse.

‘You haven't put your hair up yet,' he said.

It came to Cushie to say that her hair would be put up after the ball at which her Granny Jackaman had arranged she should be presented to the Governor-General and the world. Cushie was enraptured about the ball, but was even more pleased because her Granny had taken such a fancy to her at Grandfather's funeral. Cushie's open heart had met another in Granny; they had flown together like two birds.

But, as she drooped her head against Jackie's shoulder, she felt him trembling. It was no time to talk about outside things.

‘Jackie, I heard you had a job down Ghinni way,' she said. ‘Did something go wrong? Why are you back?'

Jackie poured it all out, not troubling to hide his chagrin and mortification, for with Cushie it was as though he were speaking to himself. While he spoke she slipped down off the sofa, and sat on the carpet, her head bent, her arms around her knees. Thus Jackie felt much taller than she.

When he had finished, her face was against his knee. He felt tears. ‘The devils! The brutes! But you stood up to them, and if it hadn't been three to one, you'd have beaten them, too. Oh, I hope the police have arrested them, I hope they get
years
in prison!'

Jackie was astonished. ‘But I didn't tell the police,' he said. He thought he would explain again about the Linzes being, however remote, still family, but she cried, ‘You're much nobler than I am. I want them punished, beaten.' Her mild eyes sparked fiercely. ‘To think of their hurting you like that, and for nothing, just for beastliness!'

‘You mustn't cry, Cushie,' he said.

‘How can I help it,' she said, outraged, ‘when it's you?'

Her head bent on his knees, his hand that felt the skin slip beneath her thin blouse, her tears falling for the humiliation he had suffered...all produced in Jackie a kind of despair. They belonged together, he didn't know why, but they did, as though nature itself had decreed it. She seemed to hold the secret of identity for him. She was reality. Yet how could they ever be together?

In an effort to distract himself, he looked around the drawing-room, its bay window shaded with slatted blinds. The cedar furniture, the tapestry chair seats, the bronze gasolier with hanging crystals, all appeared incalculably costly and rare to Jackie. Everywhere he looked there were signs of the Moys' superiority and prosperity—the glittering brass fender, the fire-screen of beaten copper, the glass-bellied cabinet full of lustre jugs and finicky figures in porcelain.