The doctor and I resembled each other in this: that there was no
offensive affability about either of us. Though abounding in
good-nature, we could not become intimate by a sudden act of volition.
Our conversation was difficult, unnatural, and by gusts falsely
familiar. He displayed to me his bachelor house, his etchings, a few
specimens of modern _rouge flambé_ ware made at Knype, his whisky, his
celebrated prize-winning fox-terrier Titus, the largest collection of
books in the Five Towns, and photographs of Marischal College, Aberdeen.
Then we fell flat, socially prone. Sitting in his study, with Titus
between us on the hearthrug, we knew no more what to say or do. I
regretted that Brindley's wife's grandmother should have been born on a
fifteenth of February. Brindley was a vivacious talker, he could be
trusted to talk. I, too, am a good talker--with another good talker.
With a bad talker I am just a little worse than he is. The doctor said
abruptly after a nerve-trying silence that he had forgotten a most
important call at Hanbridge, and would I care to go with him in the car?
I was and still am convinced that he was simply inventing. He wanted to
break the sinister spell by getting out of the house, and he had not the
face to suggest a sortie into the streets of the Five Towns as a
promenade of pleasure.
So we went forth, splashing warily through the rich mud and the dank
mist of Trafalgar Road, past all those strange little Indian-red houses,
and ragged empty spaces, and poster-hoardings, and rounded kilns, and
high, smoking chimneys, up hill, down hill, and up hill again,
encountering and overtaking many electric trams that dipped and rose
like ships at sea, into Crown Square, the centre of Hanbridge, the
metropolis of the Five Towns. And while the doctor paid his mysterious
call I stared around me at the large shops and the banks and the gilded
hotels. Down the radiating street-vistas I could make out the façades of
halls, theatres, chapels. Trams rumbled continually in and out of the
square. They seemed to enter casually, to hesitate a few moments as if
at a loss, and then to decide with a nonchalant clang of bells that they
might as well go off somewhere else in search of something more
interesting. They were rather like human beings who are condemned to
live for ever in a place of which they are sick beyond the
expressiveness of words.
And indeed the influence of Crown Square, with its large effects of
terra cotta, plate glass, and gold letters, all under a heavy skyscape
of drab smoke, was depressing. A few very seedy men (sharply contrasting
with the fine delicacy of costly things behind plate-glass) stood
doggedly here and there in the mud, immobilized by the gloomy
enchantment of the Square. Two of them turned to look at Stirling's
motor-car and me. They gazed fixedly for a long time, and then one said,
only his lips moving:
"Has Tommy stood thee that there quart o' beer as he promised thee?"
No reply, no response of any sort, for a further long period! Then the
other said, with grim resignation:
"Ay!"
The conversation ceased, having made a little oasis in the dismal desert
of their silent scrutiny of the car. Except for an occasional stamp of
the foot they never moved. They just doggedly and indifferently stood,
blown upon by all the nipping draughts of the square, and as it might be
sinking deeper and deeper into its dejection. As for me, instead of
desolating, the harsh disconsolateness of the scene seemed to uplift me;
I savoured it with joy, as one savours the melancholy of a tragic work
of art.
"We might go down to the _Signal_ offices and worry Buchanan a bit,"
said the doctor, cheerfully, when he came back to the car. This was the
second of his inspirations.
Buchanan, of whom I had heard, was another Scotchman and the editor of
the sole daily organ of the Five Towns, an evening newspaper cried all
day in the streets and read by the entire population. Its green sheet
appeared to be a permanent waving feature of the main thoroughfares. The
offices lay round a corner close by, and as we drew up in front of them
a crowd of tattered urchins interrupted their diversions in the sodden
road to celebrate our glorious arrival by unanimously yelling at the top
of their strident and hoarse voices:
"Hooray! Hoo--bl----dy--ray!"
Abashed, I followed my doctor into the shelter of the building, a new
edifice, capacious and considerable, but horribly faced with terra
cotta, and quite unimposing, lacking in the spectacular effect; like
nearly everything in the Five Towns, carelessly and scornfully ugly! The
mean, swinging double-doors returned to the assault when you pushed
them, and hit you viciously. In a dark, countered room marked
"Enquiries" there was nobody.
"Hi, there!" called the doctor.
A head appeared at a door.
"Mr Buchanan upstairs?"
"Yes," snapped the head, and disappeared.
Up a dark staircase we went, and at the summit were half flung back
again by another self-acting door.
In the room to which we next came an old man and a youngish one were
bent over a large, littered table, scribbling on and arranging pieces of
grey tissue paper and telegrams. Behind the old man stood a boy. Neither
of them looked up.
"Mr Buchanan in his--" the doctor began to question. "Oh! There you
are!"
The editor was standing in hat and muffler at the window, gazing out.
His age was about that of the doctor--forty or so; and like the doctor
he was rather stout and clean-shaven. Their Scotch accents mingled in
greeting, the doctor's being the more marked. Buchanan shook my hand
with a certain courtliness, indicating that he was well accustomed to
receive strangers. As an expert in small talk, however, he shone no
brighter than his visitors, and the three of us stood there by the
window awkwardly in the heaped disorder of the room, while the other two
men scratched and fidgeted with bits of paper at the soiled table.
Suddenly and savagely the old man turned on the boy:
"What the hades are you waiting there for?"
"I thought there was something else, sir."
"Sling your hook."
Buchanan winked at Stirling and me as the boy slouched off and the old
man blandly resumed his writing.
"Perhaps you'd like to look over the place?" Buchanan suggested politely
to me. "I'll come with you. It's all I'm fit for to-day.... 'Flu!" He
glanced at Stirling, and yawned.
"Ye ought to be in bed," said Stirling.
"Yes. I know. I've known it for twelve years. I shall go to bed as soon
as I get a bit of time to myself. Well, will you come? The half-time
results are beginning to come in."
A telephone-bell rang impatiently.
"You might just see what that is, boss," said the old man without
looking up.
Buchanan went to the telephone and replied into it: "Yes? What? Oh!
Myatt? Yes, he's playing.... Of course I'm sure! Good-bye." He turned to
the old man: "It's another of 'em wanting to know if Myatt is playing.
Birmingham, this time."
"Ah!" exclaimed the old man, still writing.
"It's because of the betting," Buchanan glanced at me. "The odds are on
Knype now--three to two."
"If Myatt is playing Knype have got me to thank for it," said the
doctor, surprisingly.
"You?"
"Me! He fetched me to his wife this morning. She's nearing her
confinement. False alarm. I guaranteed him at least another twelve
hours."
"Oh! So that's it, is it?" Buchanan murmured.
Both the sub-editors raised their heads.
"That's it," said the doctor.
"Some people were saying he'd quarrelled with the trainer again and was
shamming," said Buchanan. "But I didn't believe that. There's no
hanky-panky about Jos Myatt, anyhow."
I learnt in answer to my questions that a great and terrible football
match was at that moment in progress at Knype, a couple of miles away,
between the Knype Club and the Manchester Rovers. It was conveyed to me
that the importance of this match was almost national, and that the
entire district was practically holding its breath till the result
should be known. The half-time result was one goal each.
"If Knype lose," said Buchanan, explanatorily, "they'll find themselves
pushed out of the First League at the end of the season. That's a cert
... one of the oldest clubs in England! Semi-finalists for the English
Cup in '78."
"'79," corrected the elder sub-editor.