Tomato Cain and Other Stories Read online

  The eight-year-old gave a whine of objection as his mother prised him from his seat. “Hush! The buggane’ll get ye!” said Mrs Kaighin.

  “Aw, let the kids go,” said Callister. “Nellie an’ me can get there some other —“

  “No!” said Mr Clucas. He strode around the trap with the solid step of a man who had decided to hide his doubts. “We can all get in. If ye don’t mind squeezin’ a bit.” He took his place.

  Behind his back, they agreed about knees for the children to sit on.

  “And maybe walk up the hills.” His eyes were on the jogging Robert.

  “What age is he now?” asked Callister.

  Ah - he’s gettin’ on.” Mr Clucas felt that Robert’s age should be his secret. To give it, amid head shakes, would be like shortening the animal’s life. He asked, “Are th’ ould women at home?”.

  Mrs Kaighin turned from wiping Grace’s nose.

  “They said they’d wait at the four roads. Aren’t we nearly there? Yes, see younger - that’s thim!”

  The old old ladies squeezed aboard, softly finical about their clothes and the iron steps. Mrs Kaighin introduced everybody.

  “It is most kind of you to take us along, Mr Clucas,” said the taller, and seemingly older, in her English voice.

  He felt uncomfortable. “No, no. We were goin’ anyway. I - I’m glad ye could come.”

  “We are deeply obliged,” said the younger Miss Barlow.

  The beat of Robert’s hoofs became slower on a gentle gradient.

  “We have not been to town for a considerable time,” the elder added. On her mother’s knee, Grace began to fidget.

  Nellie Callister said, “It’s quite an adventure, isn’t it? Mr Clucas was sayin’ before we started.” It sounded false and silly, and she blushed.

  “Yes,” said the younger Miss Barlow.

  Mrs Kaighin began to silence her daughter with sharp, soft smacks. “Didn’t I tell ye! Be still, or th’ black man’ll get ye!” The child buried her head and whimpered. The widow’s face was sullen with anger at herself.

  The young Callisters were whispering. Edward John lay asleep against the young man’s chest. As if their lives depended upon it, the two English ladies studied the fields and sky.

  Sunlight was rolling the mist up towards the mountains. Bright gorse spattered the hedges with yellow.

  But behind Mr Clucas was silence: embarrassment, regret and dislike. Only essential words were heard when they dismounted at a steep hill and climbed in again at the top; or when food was eaten, near noon. Once they heard church bells and a little whisper of guilt ran around, but that was all.

  At last Mr Clucas tapped Callister and pointed.

  “I always think it looks nice from here.”

  The little sandstone town was coming into view. Chimneys first: then the broad empty bay, and the crumbling red castle on its islet.

  “Very charming,” said the younger Miss Barlow.

  They agreed to split up and find their separate pleasures, afterwards meeting in time for tea. Mr Clucas suggested it, seeing the situation, and they fell in with the plan so quickly that they felt uncomfortable.

  Downhill through the narrow empty streets to the market square, and there four of the party alighted.

  “We can find the shops nicely from here,” said the elder spinster. The young Callisters were going to the castle. “I haven’t ever been inside it,” Nellie said. “Just fancy!” I’ve been in Peel many a time, but I never went there.”

  The trap creaked on down the narrow white-washed lanes.

  The smell of Sunday dinners still mingled with the kippery air from the curing sheds. In the doorways, newly-fed cats washed themselves.

  At the stables, Mr Clucas found an acquaintance who would see to Robert’s needs. He lingered a few minutes to help with the harness. The children watched, while their mother strayed, fretting, down the road outside.

  “What did that man mean?” said Edward John, and Mr Clucas hurried them on to catch up the widow. “He said Robert was going down a hill. What hill?”

  “Nothin’!” Mr Clucas felt angry with the boy for saying it. “He just likes to talk.”

  They went with Mrs Kaighin to the shore, with its dry, white sand piled steeply above the high-water mark.

  “Terrible stuff. It’s never out of your clothes for a week.” Mrs Kaighin took the children’s shoes and stockings, and sent them to play, calling a stream of warnings after them. “Don’t go in deep, now, d’ye hear! Or the tasroo-ushtey'll get ye, and pull y’ under! And watch for broken glass! Edward John, take her hand, now!”

  She sighed. “Childher’s a dreadful worry, aren’t they, Mr Clucas?”

  “Well, yes, ” said Mr. Clucas.” His wife had died without having any.

  She looked along the almost empty sea-front, with its black windows, and back at the two small figures nearing the water’s edge. “I think I’ll lie down here a bit: keep an eye on thim. There’s a newspaper in me bag. Would you like a sheet to sit on?”

  He sat and smoked at her side. He could see the woman was still blaming herself for breaking up the party, though she was less wild now. Good-hearted but desperate in her ways. He looked at her over his pipe. Her eyes were wet.

  “Never mind me, Mr Clucas,” she said, dabbing. “Silly!”

  “I’ll go,” he said. She might be going to ask him to forgive her.

  “No! Don’t go. It’ll do ye good here in the sunshine. I was just thinkin’. Look at thim playin’ down yonder. Babies. An’ there’s me havin’ to shout at thim, an’ fricken them, with all sorts of silly bogies.

  Like an ould screetchin’ witch-woman.” She lay on her back and her big bosom shook.

  “Aw, now.” He gently patted her hand. “ Don’t say such a thing that isn’t true.”

  “Yes, it is! I can’t manage thim, that’s what it is.”

  Missing a father, thought Clucas. He said, “They’re right enough.”

  She sniffed and sat up. “Where’s me hankie?” Her nose blew. As if she had known his thought, she said,“Nearly three years now he went. He was a good husband. I’m at me wits’ end to feed thim sometimes. If it wasn’t for gettin’ knittin’ to do, like this - !” From the bag she brought a man’s jersey, half-finished. Her hands dropped into her lap as she watched the water-line.

  She stiffened. “Edward John!” she shouted; then her voice softened self-consciously. “Watch your sister there, will ye! There’s a boy.”

  When she looked round, Mr. Clucas had gone.

  The streets seemed smaller than when he had lived in the town years ago. And tidier. Clean, but mean, he thought.

  He felt ashamed, now, at running away from Mrs Kaighin. A decent woman. But her talk had alarmed him, and he had found a protective feeling growing in him. It was best to leave her. He was happy with the remains of his old life.

  He wandered about the tiny, sloping streets, with their bright paint. There were new business names about, and shops selling different goods. His rare visits had lost track of the changes.

  People were few. It was too early for visitors. A pair of young men in bowler hats went past on an afternoon stroll; he did not know them. A woman sitting half-asleep in a sunny doorway said, “Good day to you,” but it was only for civility.

  At last he reached the shadowed street where he had lived with his wife, and looked down it with a casual, stranger’s eye. Three chattering children ran from it on their way to Sunday School. He felt nothing. It was just like any other street.

  Then he saw the stone. One of the worn sandstone blocks that made the street corner, shoulder-high.

  He stood staring. Those same cracks and marks of wear had met him before. Two or three times a day; every day. Remembering, it held him minute after minute.

  Finally he turned away, half dizzy, one hand feeling the wall to steady himself. Everything had rushed upon him, unaltered. He could not enter that street again.

  He would go to the harbour and l
ook at the herring boats.

  As he went, breathing hard, it seemed that all over the bright streets danced little ghosts of familiar stones.

  “I know perfectly well what I mean! And it distinctly says three-and-eleven a yard,” said the elder Miss Barlow. She crouched in a shop doorway, peering behind the lowered blinds.

  “Five-and-eleven,” said her sister, beside her. “It’s a five that looks like a three. Look again and see whether I’m not right.”

  The elder turned. Pale, her hairy upper lip trembling, she had straightened. “Anne, you must be ailing! Ever since we arrived, you have been determined to spoil my afternoon with all manner of petty contradictions.”

  “Nonsense, Ethel —“

  “It is not! You began with the street names. Then you took me to task over my own mother’s birthday!”

  “Our mother.”

  “And ever since, I haven’t been able to make a single observation that has gone uncorrected by you!” She seized her sister’s arm tightly, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “What are you trying to do? Persuade me I’m senile?”

  The younger was horrified. “Ethel! Remember where we are!” She tried to twist free and see if they were still alone. “Let me go, if you please!” She was released. Her sister began to cry softly, leaning against the shop window.

  “Ethel. Have you a handkerchief? Come away; people will look at you!”

  The elder lady was past control. “It was your fault that we ever left England! Why did we come to this horrible place?”

  “Ethel - please!”

  “I’ll tell you! It was because you insisted on it, and badgered me until - oh, get out of my sight!”

  Miss Anne patted miserably at her sister’s shoulders, peeping about for watching windows. Luckily, most of the street seemed to consist of a long, blank wall.

  “They don’t want us here! Tell them we’ve no money, and see if they do! Tell them we come to the shops on Sunday because we’ve nothing to spend! They hate us!”

  “Nonsense! Every one has tried to be most kind.”

  Miss Ethel made a noise between a cry and a cough.

  “Nonsense again? That’s the last time you’ll say it! I’m going to leave you! I’m going to, I swear it! By God and by heaven I swear - - ” Her voice became shriller as she was seized by the shoulders and shaken.

  Only a window-ledge cat seemed to see the old ladies struggle, black dresses rustling in the sun.

  “Ethel—look !” The commotion suddenly stopped. “Mr Clucas!”

  The sight of him completed the shocking of the elder out of her hysteria. She turned away and took out a handkerchief.

  “Oh, Mr Clucas!” said Anne, as he came up. She tried to control her breathing. “Isn’t - isn’t it warm?”

  He seemed not to notice her, and she was relieved. “My sister felt unwell. Might we walk with you a little way?”

  “Yes. Of course,” he said.

  As they started, a window squeaked open some where behind them, but none of them turned. Not looking at each other, they went slowly towards the harbour, the older lady growing steadier on her feet and sniffing less.

  A high, wide causeway ran to the islet, and the gateway of the red, broken castle covered it. Inside the walls, thick sparingly grass had cushioned the old parade ground, and filled the roofless chapel and armouries, making them comfortable for picnickers. The empty embrasures gave the peeping visitor picture post-card views of the bay, and the softly smoking town, and the shallow harbour where the herring fleet tied up. Only one or two of the positions still held an ancient, black cannon.

  “Aw, Nell! It’s harmless.” He caught his wife up. “The thing’s dreadful ould, all bunged up with rust an’ tar, it’ll never go off.” He looked sideways into her face. “What's up, Nell?”

  “Nothin’.” She looked past him, among the ruins. “Let’s find a place to sit.” So quietly, for her, that he was uneasy.

  On the warm turf by the round tower, he took her hand.

  “Nell, love - Oh, my lord, look at this!” he said, “Sunday School outing!” Children of all ages, with adults in the rear, were spreading noisily along the battlements. “I bet it’s kids that tears the place down, not ould age.” He tried to catch her eye. “Aw, they needn't bother us, eh?”

  An old man sat down nearby and began to open a paper bag with shaking fingers.

  “Jem,” she whispered. “Love you.” Half-forgiving, half-apologetic.

  Relief warmed little Callister till he felt the expression on his face change, and make the old man look a him.

  “I get pains if I go long without a bite,” said the old man. An egg lay on the grass beside him, and his stiff fingers were clumsily shelling another.

  “Ye’ll be right enough with those inside ye,” said Callister. But he was not really noticing the old man. Nellie had slipped off her bonnet and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Jemmy,” she said.

  He pressed his cheek to her hair.

  “For once ye didn’t fuss me.” He smiled. The old man stared across the bay, munching.

  “I loved it all, Jemmy,” she said. “It was awful nice.” She giggled. “That fat fella nearly stuck.

  in the staircase! But then - we went to that damp hole of a place. Would they really shut up people there? All their lives?”

  “Aw - I don't know. I don’t suppose anybody knows, nowadays.”

  She nodded. “An’ then I seen th’ ould gun. Pointin’ down on the people in the harbour. It would be a terrible killin’ thing once.”

  The old man’s egg-shells crackled. A gust of children’s squeals echoed in the skeleton of the armoury.

  Callister felt her laugh then, and he was relieved.

  “I might be puttin’ a mark on the child, thinkin’ these things,” she whispered.

  “A neat little cannon on his chest,” he said in her ear, “might be quite decorative if it were well carried out.”

  She smiled. “Or a dungeon.”

  “Woman,” he said. “If you can produce a birthmark to look like a dungeon, we’ll exhibit it an’ charge admission!” She kicked at his ankle.

  The old man had finished his eggs. He brushed crumbs from his beard as he rose.

  “Good day,” he said.

  Callister turned to nod at him, then felt himself held. His wife suddenly twisted in his arms and gripped him tightly. “Jemmy!” She was staring into his face; as if she saw a mile behind his eyes. “Jemmy!”

  He whispered: “Love?”

  The frightening look went from her, as she pushed her face into his shoulder.

  “Oh, Jemmy, I just felt suddenly - I don’t know. Sort of glad that we don’t live a long time ago.”

  He did not smile. She went on:

  “It’d be no sort of world for a child. When they killed each other, and shut each other in dark places till the end of their days.”

  She looked up. Like a creature startled at its own voice.

  “Say I’m a fool and make me laugh, Jemmy, will ye?”

  “Ah, here’s two of them now,” said Mr Clucas. “Come from seeing the sights.”

  The odd silence of the English ladies had puzzled him, and he was glad when the young Callisters appeared. The five of them wound among the afternoon strollers on the sea-front.

  “Somewhere here I left her - there’s the childher anyhow.” They reached the place; and the children had heaped sand on their mother; and there was polite laughing, and supernatural threats by the widow, swearing her knitting was ruined; and it was time for tea.

  “I’ve arranged it to be all ready for us,” said Mr Clucas.

  They feasted on kippers fresh from the curing-shed, cooked so that the smoky juice would run, and whet the appetite for more. And as the big brown teapot was emptied and watered and emptied again, they began to talk to each other.

  The civilities of passing food grew into chatter about the town. They talked about the things they had seen and forgot about the th
ings they had felt. By the time they left the house where teas were made, Callister had a child holding each hand and his wife was in deep gossip with the English ladies.

  “I’ll maybe be puttin’ a sight on ye one day soon.” Mr Clucas was last, with the widow. “To see the childher’s behavin’. If ye’d like.”

  She nodded. “Oh, I’d be glad if ye would. Come down to-morrow; an’ we'll have a bite of tea. Little devils - I’m smothered in sand still!”

  Mr Clucas stepped off to find Robert, and trotted him up to the market square just in time to meet the passengers.

  They drew up the hill out of the town, walking the steep part, and halted to look at the castle, black on the track of the sun as it dropped towards Ireland.

  Small talk soon tired itself, and when they passed a roofless, overgrown cottage, Mr Clucas left Robert to manage himself while he told of the man who had lived in it. A desperate believer in fairies, till one mid-summer night they found him floating face down on a pond, dressed only in a robe of cat-skins, with a bunch of herbs in his hand. It had been a struggle to get him Christian burial.

  There were many murmurs in the trap.

  “Ah, some queer ones there were around here,” said Callister. “My da used to tell of a feller that spent himself doin’ th’ ould Manx Bible into English for the benefit of the heathen across the water!”

  The old ladies laughed as delightedly as if it were a personal compliment.

  “Indeed, perhaps he was not so far wrong after all,” said Miss Anne. “Our Minister at home in Wiltshire often remarked - “

  “Stop the trap!”

  The widow had slipped Grace from her knee and was bending across Nellie Callister.

  “What’s up?” The young husband’s voice shot high.

  “She’s sick.”

  There was a frightened stillness in the trap.

  “Jemmy, get down and help me get her out.” The widow was in charge. “Edward John, see you get a cup from me basket and run to find a well. Easy now with her!”

  They supported the collapsing girl to the roadside.

  “In through the trees there,” said Mrs Kaighin. “There’s a patch where she can lay flat.” Among the early foxgloves she turned. “Now get along with ye, Jemmy. Leave me. I’ll do better alone.”