Childish Things. Robin Jenkins

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СКАЧАТЬ She was wearing a long green skirt and a red woolly jumper, fastened at the neck by a large safety pin. Her colour hadn’t improved and the shadows under her eyes were almost black.

      She took the cigarette out of her mouth. ‘Why, Gregor, it’s you,’ she said, as if unsurprised.

      ‘What’s left of me, Chrissie. How are you?’

      ‘Fatter, as you can see, and my feet are still killing me. You’re looking grand.’

      She must have meant the blue blazer with the gold buttons, and the white cravat. Surely she wasn’t too myopic to see the grief on my face.

      ‘Come in, Gregor.’

      ‘Thank you, Chrissie.’

      As I followed her, I saw that her bottom had got bigger and more shapeless. ‘It never bothers me, Gregor,’ she had said. ‘I just sit on it.’

      In the living-room, on a table in front of the gas fire, were exercise books, a glass with whisky in it, a box of cigarettes, and an ash-tray. When I was headmaster, I had objected to members of my staff marking, drinking, and smoking at the same time. That I had done it myself before my elevation had been beside the point.

      ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said.

      She took my hat and threw it at a sofa. It landed on the carpet among books and newspapers.

      ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she asked.

      ‘No, thank you, Chrissie. I gave it up years ago.’

      ‘Is that why you’re looking so spry? What about a dram then?’

      ‘A small one, please. I’m driving.’

      Glasses in hand, we stared at each other.

      Tears came into my eyes. This was unwise, in that company, this was the woman who had called me a fraud, but I could not help it. They were as genuine as my nature allowed.

      ‘So your wife’s dead,’ she said. ‘I saw the notice in the Herald.’

      ‘Kate was buried this afternoon.’

      ‘I’m sorry, Gregor. Cancer, was it?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Her brother told me.’

      ‘Hector?’

      ‘I go into his shop now and then to buy a book.’

      ‘You must be the only one who does.’

      ‘Yes, he’s not very busy. I met her just the once. I liked her. She had a merry laugh.’

      ‘Yes, she had.’

      ‘I hope she didn’t suffer.’

      ‘She did, a bit, at the end, but she bore it bravely.’ My voice trembled.

      ‘Poor soul.’

      Then we sat in silence for a minute or so.

      ‘You’ve lost no time in coming to ask me to take her place, Gregor. I’m afraid I can’t accept but I appreciate it just the same.’

      This was Chrissie’s not very subtle irony.

      ‘I’ll never marry again, Chrissie,’ I said. ‘No one could take Kate’s place.’

      ‘If anyone does, she’ll be younger, bonnier, tidier, thinner, and richer than me.’

      She had often poked fun, with a tinge of contempt, at my ambition to be rich. After all, I was supposed to be an egalitarian. But she was not to know, for I would never tell her, that what I really wanted was to be in a position one day to exorcise memories of childhood, when I had been so often, so bitterly, degraded by poverty.

      Not even Kate had known about that.

      I said, ‘My daughter Madge and her husband want me to go and live with them in San Diego.’

      ‘Why don’t you? Best climate in the world, they say.’

      ‘And sunshine is kind to old bones.’

      ‘Lots of rich old widows.’

      ‘Why not? Look what money can buy.’

      ‘Swanky cars. Swish blazers.’

      ‘And books. And theatre tickets. And travel to exotic places. And immunity from the insolence of inferior men.’

      She laughed. ‘Who ever dared to be insolent to you, Gregor.’

      ‘There was a time, Chrissie.’

      ‘You’re not going to tell me about it?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Well, would you like us to read something suitable? Adonais? Urn Burial? Ecclesiastes?’

      ‘You’ve got those essays to correct.’

      ‘I’ll finish them later. It’s a waste of time anyway. They pay absolutely no heed to my corrections and suggestions.’

      As a teacher, I had had similar doubts about the value of homework but, as a headmaster, I had had to insist that every class got plenty of it.

      There was no sign of the portrait of Rosa Luxemburg, the German pacifist and socialist, murdered by evil men. Chrissie’s ambition had been to write a book about her.

      What had happened? I did not ask. If her dreams of a juster world had faded, it was not for me to crow.

      ‘Are you going to pay Hector a visit while you’re here?’ she asked. ‘He’s not well.’

      ‘He looked very ill at the funeral.’

      ‘He was fond of his sister.’

      ‘He didn’t visit her very often. I suppose that was because of me. Yet I never did him any harm.’

      ‘He thought you weren’t fair to your wife.’

      An opinion, it seemed, shared by many. If they were right, it was too late to make amends. I felt desolate.

      ‘Were you unfair to her, Gregor?’

      ‘You’d have given me six-and-a-half out of ten, Chrissie.’

      ‘What would she have given you?’

      I heard Kate’s voice. It’s no business of hers, Gregor. Tell her ten.

      It was the kind of question typical of Chrissie. Even at 60 or so, she still put truth, as she saw it, before compassion.

      ‘What are we heathens to do, Chrissie, if we feel we deserve divine punishment СКАЧАТЬ