Hesba Stretton - "The Christmas Child"

Fred M. White - "The Crimson Blind "

T. W. Lumb - "Authors of Greece"

John Morley - "Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3)"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude




"He likes you. I'm so glad--he only does that to people he likes, and he's
very particular." The small girl flung her hair back, smiled at Peter, and
sat down on the grass.

"It may be rather damp," Peter said, feeling very old and cautious and
thinking that she really was the oddest child he'd even seen in his life.
"It's only March you know."

"It's nothing to do with months, it's whether it's rained or not--and it
hasn't--sit down with me. Old Jackson won't be here for ages."

Peter sat down. The puppy was a charming specimen of its kind--it had
enormous ears, huge flat feet, and a round fat body like a very small
barrel. It was very fond of Peter, and licked his cheek and his hands, and
finally dragged off his cap, imagined it a rabbit, and bit it with a great
deal of savagery and good-humour.

There followed conversation.

"I like you most awfully. I like your neck and your eyes and your
hair--it's stiff, like my father's. My name is Clare Elizabeth Rossiter.
What's yours?"

"Peter Westcott."

"Do you live here?"

"No--a good long way away--by the sea."

"Oh, I'm staying at Kenwyn--my uncle lives at Kenwyn, but I live in London
with father and mother and Aunt Grace--it's nice here. I think you're such
a nice boy. Will you come and see father and mother in London?"

Peter smiled. It would not be the thing for some one in a bookshop to
go and call on the parents of any one who could afford Crumpet and Miss
Jackson, but the thought of London, the very name of it, sent his blood
tingling to his face.

"Perhaps we shall meet," he said. "I'm going to London soon."

"Oh! are you? Oh! How nice! Then, of course, you will come to tea. Every
one comes to tea."

Crumpet, tired of the rabbit, worn out with adventure and peril, struggled
into Peter's lap and slumbered with one ear lying back across his eyes. The
sun slipped down upon the town and touched the black cathedral with flame,
and turned the silver of the river into burning gold. On the bend of the
hill against the sky came a black gaunt figure.

"Miss Jackson!" Clare Elizabeth Rossiter leapt to her feet, clutched
Crumpet, held him upside down, and turned to go.

But for an instant she stayed, and Peter was rewarded with a very wonderful
smile.

"I am so glad you were here--she generally sleeps longer, but perhaps it
was New Testament to-day, and that's more exciting. It is a pity, because
there were such lots of things--I like you most awfully."

She gave him a very dirty hand, and then her black stockings vanished over
the hill.

Peter turned, through a flaming sunset, towards his home ... the end of the
incident.


III

But he came home, on that Good Friday evening with an idea that that
afternoon on the hill had given him. It was an idea that came to him from
the little piece of superstition that he carried about with him--every
Cornishman carries it. Treliss was always a place of many customs, and,
although now these ceremonies drag themselves along with all the mercenary
self-consciousness that America and cheap trips from Manchester have given
to the place, at this stage of Peter's history they were genuine and honest
enough. To see from the top of the Grey Hill, the rising of the sun on
Easter morning was one of them--a charm that brought the most infallible
good luck until next Easter Day came round again, and, good for you, if you
could watch that sunrise with the lad or lass of your choice, for to pass
round the Giant's Finger as the beams caught the stone made the success
of your union beyond all question. There was risk about it, for if mists
veiled the light or if clouds dimmed the rising then were your prospects
but gloomy--but a fine Easter morning had decided many a wedding in
Treliss.

Peter had known of this for many years, but, in earlier times, he had not
been at liberty, and of late there had been other things to think about.
But here was a fine chance! Was he not flinging himself into the world
under the very hazardous patronage of Mr. Zanti on Easter Wednesday, and
would he not therefore need every blessing that he could get? And who knew,
after all, whether these things were such nonsense? They were old enough,
these customs, and many wise people believed in them. Moreover, one had not
been brought up in the company of Frosted Moses and Dicky the Fool without
catching some of their fever! "There was a little star rolling down hill
like a button," says Dicky, with his eyes staring....' Well, and why not?

And indeed here was Peter at this stage of things, a mad I bundle of
contradictions--old as a judge when up against the Realities, young as
Crumpet the puppy when staring at Romance. Give him bread and you have
him of cast-iron--stern, cold, hard of muscle, grim frown, stiff back,
no smiles. Give him jam and you have credulity, simplicity, longing for
friendship, tenderness, devotion to a small girl in a black frock, a heart
big as the world. See him on Good Friday afternoon, laughing, eagerly
questioning, a boy--see him on Good Friday night, grim, legs stiff, eyes
cold as stones, a man--no easy thing for Mrs. Pascoe's blowzy thunderings
to conquer, but something vastly amusing apparently to grandfather Westcott
to watch.

He discovered that the sun rose about six o'clock, and therefore five
o'clock on Easter morning found him shivering, in the desolate garden with
his nose pressed to the little wooden gate. The High Road crossed the moor
at no great distance from him, but the faint grey light that hung like
gauze about him was not yet strong enough to reveal it. He would hear them
as they passed and they must all go up that road on the way to the hill.
In the garden there was darkness, and beyond it in the high shadow of the
house and the surrounding trees, blackness. He could smell the soil, and
his cheeks were wet with beads of moisture; very faintly the recurrent
boom of the sea came through the mist, dimmed as though by thick folds of
hanging carpet.

Suddenly the dark trees by the house, moved by a secret wind, would
shudder. The little black gate slowly revealed its bars against the sky as
the grey shadows lightened. Then there were voices, coming through the dark
shut off, like the sea, by the mist--strange voices, not human, but sharing
with the soil and the trees the mysterious quality of the night. The voices
passed up the road--silence and then more voices.

Peter unlatched the gate and stole out to the road, stumbling over the
rough moorland path and clambering across the ditch to safer ground.
Figures were moving like shadows and voices fell echoing and re-echoing
like notes of music--this was dissociated from all human feeling, and the
mists curled up like smoke and faded into the air. Peter, in silence,
followed these shadows and knew that there were other shadows behind him.
It would not take long to climb the Grey Hill--they would be at the top by
half-past five.

There was a voice in his ear:

"Hallo! You--Westcott! Why, who would have thought it?"

He turned round and found at his side the peaked face of Willie Daffoll,
now a young man of eighteen, with an affection for bright ties and socks,
once the small child who had fought with Peter at old Parlow's years ago.
Peter had not seen very much of him during those years. They had met in
the streets of Treliss, had spoken a word or two, but no friendship or
intimacy. But this early hour, this mysterious dawn, bred confidence, and
Peter having grown, under the approaching glitter of London, more human,
during the last few weeks than he had been in all his life before, was glad
to talk to him.

"Oh, I've often wanted to go," he said. "It brings good luck, you know."

"Well, fancy your believing that. I never thought you'd believe in rot like
that."

"Why are you going, then?"

The young man of ties and waistcoats dropped his voice. "Oh--a girl. She's
here somewhere--she said she'd come--thinks there's something in it. Anyhow
she wants it--she's stunning...."

A girl! Peter's mind flew absurdly back to a small child in a short black
frock. "Oh! Crumpet!" ... A girl! Young Daffoll had spoken as though it
were indeed something to get up at four in the morning for! Peter wanted to
hear more. Young Daffoll was quite ready to tell him. No names, of course,
but they were going to be married one day. His governor would be furious,
of course, and they might have to run away, but she was game for anything.
No, he'd only known her a fortnight, but it had been a matter of love at
first sight--extraordinary thing--he'd thought he'd been head over ears
before, but never anything like this--yes, as a matter of fact she was in a
flower-shop--Trunter's in the High Street--her people had come down in the
world--and so the golden picture unfolded as the gauze curtains were drawn
back from the world, and the shoulder of the Grey Hill rose, like a cloud,
before them.

Peter's heart beat faster as he listened to this story. Here was one of his
dreams translated into actual fact. Would he one day also have some one for
whom he would be ready to run to the end of the world, if furious parents
demanded it? She would have, he was sure, red-gold hair and a wonderful
smile.

They climbed the Grey Hill. There was with them now quite a company of
persons--still shadow-shapes, for the mists were thick about the road, but
soon all the butchers and bakers of the world--and, let it be remembered,
all the lovers, would be revealed. Now, as they climbed the hill, silence
fell--even young Daffoll was quiet; that, too, it seemed, was part of the
ceremony.

The hill top was swiftly gained. The Giant's Finger, black and straight,
like a needle, stood through the shadows. Beyond there would be the sea,
and that was where the sun would rise, at present darkness. They all sat
down on the stones that covered the summit--on either side of Peter there
were figures, but Daffoll had vanished--it seemed that he had discovered
his lady.

Peter, sitting meditating on the story that he had heard and feeling,
suddenly, lonely and deserted, was conscious of a small shoe that touched
his boot. It was, beyond argument, a friendly shoe--he could feel that in
the inviting tap that it gave to him. He was aware also that his shoulder
was touching another shoulder, and that that shoulder was soft and warm.
Finally his hand touched another hand--fingers were intertwined.

There was much conversation out of the mist:

"Law, chrisy! Well, it's the last Easter morning for me--thiccy sun hides
himself right enough--it's poor trade sitting shivering your toes."

"Not that I care for the woman, mind ye, Mr. Tregothan, sir--with her
haverings talking--all I'm saying is that if she's to come wastin' my
time--

"Thiccy man sitting there stormin' like an old owl in a tree."

"Oh, get along with ye--No, I won't be sitting by ye--There's--"

Now the sea, like a young web stretched at the foot of the hill, stole out
of the darkness. On the horizon a thin line of dull yellow--wouldn't it be
a fine sunrise?--the figures on the hill were gathering shape and form, and
many of them now were standing, their bodies sharp against the grey sky.

Peter had not turned; his eyes were staring out to sea, but his body was
pressed closely against the girl at his side. He did not turn nor look at
her--she was staring at him with wonder in her eyes and a smile on her
lips. She was a very common girl with black hair and over-red cheeks, and
she was one of the dairymaids from Tregothan Farm. She did not know whom
this strange young man might be, and it was not yet light enough to see.
She did not care--such things had happened often enough before, and she
leant her fat body against his shoulder. She could feel his heart thumping
and his hands were very hot, but she thought that it was strange that he
did not turn and look at her....

There was a stir and murmur among the crowd on the hill for behold it would
be a fine sunrise! The dull yellow had brightened to gold and was speeding
like a herald across the grey. Black on the hill, gold on the sky, a
trembling whispering blue across the sea--in a moment there would be the
sun! What gods were there hiding, at that instant, on the hill, watching,
with scornful eyes this crowd of moderns? Hidden there behind the stones,
what mysteries? Screening with their delicate bodies the faint colours of
the true dawn, playing on their pipes tunes that these citizens with their
coarse voices and dull hearing could not understand, what ancient watchers
of the hill pass and repass!

Behold the butchers and bakers! Behold Mr. Winneren, hosier and outfitter,
young Robert Trefusis, farmer, Miss Bessie Waddell from the sweet-shop!...
These others fade away as the sun rises--the grey mists pass with them.

The sun is about to leap above the rim of the sea. Peter turns and crushes
the poor dairymaid in his arms and stifles the little scream with the first
kiss of his life. His whole body burns in that kiss--and then, as the sun
streams across the sea he has sprung to his feet and vanishes over the brow
of the hill.

The dairymaid wipes her lips with the back of her hand. They have joined
hands and are already dancing round the Giant's Finger. It is black now,
but in a moment the flames of the sun will leap upon it, and good omens
will send them all singing down the hill.


IV

On Tuesday evening Peter slipped for a moment into Zachary Tan's shop
and told Mr. Zanti that he would be on the station platform at half-past
seven on the following morning. He could scarcely speak for excitement. He
was also filled with a penetrating sadness. Above all, he wished only to
exchange the briefest word with his future master. He did not understand
altogether but it was perhaps because Mr. Zanti and all his world belonged
to to-morrow.... Mr. Zanti's fat, jolly body, his laugh, his huge soft
hands ... Peter could not do more to this gentleman than remember that
he meant so much that he would be overwhelmed by him if he did not leave
him alone. So he darted in and gave his message and darted out again. The
little street was shining in the sun and the gentlest waves were lapping
the wooden jetty--Oh, this dear town! These houses, these cobbles--all the
smells and colours of the place--he was leaving it all so easily on so
perilous an adventure. Poor Peter was moved by so many things that he could
only gulp the tears back and hurry home. There was at any rate work to be
done there about which there could be no uncertain intention.

His father had been drinking all the afternoon. Mrs. Pascoe with red arms
akimbo, watched them as they ate their supper.

When the meal was finished Peter, standing by his father, his face very
white, said:

"I am going to London to-morrow."

Mr. Westcott had aged a great deal during the last month. His hair was
touched with grey, there were dark lines under his eyes, his cheeks were
sunken, his lip trembled. He was looking moodily at the cloth, crumbling
his bread. He did not hear Peter's remark, but continued his argument with
Mrs. Pascoe:

"It wasn't cooked, I tell you--you're growing as slack as Hell."

"Your precious son 'as got something as 'e would like to say to yer,"
remarked that pleasant woman grimly.

Peter repeated his remark. His father grasped it but slowly--at last he
said:

"Damn you, what are you talking about?"

"I'm leaving here and going to London to-morrow."

Mr. Westcott turned his bloodshot eyes in the direction of the
fire-place--"Curse it, I can't see straight. You young devil--I'll do for
you--" all this said rather sullenly and as though he were speaking to
himself.

Peter, having delivered his news, passed Mrs. Pascoe's broad body, and
moved to the doorway. He turned with his hand on the door.

"I'm glad I'm going," he said, "you've always bullied me, and I've always
hated you. You killed my mother and she was a good woman. You can have
this house to yourself--you and grandfather--and that woman--" he nodded
contemptuously at Mrs. Pascoe, who was staring at him fiercely. His
grandfather was fast asleep beneath the cushions.

"Damn you," said Mr. Westcott very quietly. "You've always been
ungrateful--I didn't kill your mother, but she was always a tiresome,
crying woman."

He stopped crumbling the bread and suddenly picked up a table knife and
hurled it at Peter. His hand was trembling, and the knife quivering, was
fastened to the door.

Mrs. Pascoe gasped, "Gawd 'elp us!"

Peter quietly closed the door behind him and went up to his room.

He was in no way disturbed by this interview. His relations with his
father were not of the things that now mattered. They had mattered before
his mother died. They had mattered whilst his father had been somebody
strong and terrible. Even at the funeral how splendid he had seemed! But
this trembling creature who drank whisky with the cook was some one who
concerned Peter not at all--something like the house, to be left behind.

There was an old black bag that had held his things in the Dawson's
days--it held his things now. Not a vast number--only the black suit beside
the blue serge one that he was going to wear, some under-linen, a sponge,
and a toothbrush, the books and an old faded photograph of his mother as a
girl. Nothing like that white face that he had seen, this photograph, old,
yellow, and faded, but a girl laughing and beautiful--after all, his most
precious possession.

Then, when the bag was packed, he sat on the bed, swung his legs, and
thought about everything. He was nearly eighteen, nearly a man, and as hard
as rock. He could feel the muscles swelling, there was no fat about him, he
was sound all over.

He looked back and saw the things that stood out like hills above the
plain--that night, years ago, when he was whipped, the day that he first
met Mr. Zanti, the first day at school, the day when he said good-bye to
Cards, the hour, at the end of it all, when they hissed him, that last
evening with Stephen, the day with his mother ... and then, quite lately,
that afternoon when Mr. Zanti asked him to go to London, the little girl
with the black frock on the hill ... last of all, that kiss (never mind
with whom) on Easter morning--all these things had made him what he
was--yes, and all the people--Frosted Moses, Stephen, his father, his
mother, Bobby Galleon, Cards, Mr. Zanti, the little girl. As he swung his
legs he knew that everything that he did afterwards would be, in some way,
attached to these earlier things and these earlier people.

He had brave hopes and brave ambitions and a warm heart as he flung himself
into bed; it speaks well for him that, on the night before he set out on
his adventure, he slept like the child that he really was.

But he knew that he would wake at six o'clock. He had determined that
it should be so, and the clocks were striking as he opened his eyes. It
was very dark and the cocks crowed beyond his open window, and the misty
morning swept in and blew his lighted candle up and down. He dressed in
the blue serge suit with a blue tie fastened in a sailor's knot. He leaned
out of his window and tried to imagine, out of the darkness, the beloved
moor--then he took his black bag and crept downstairs; it was striking
half-past six as he came softly into the hall.

There he saw that the gas was flaring and that his father was standing in
his night-shirt.

"I think I'm in front of you," he said, smiling.

"Let me go, father," Peter said, very white, and putting down the bag.

"Be damned to you," said his father. "You don't get through this door."

It was all so ludicrous, so utterly absurd, that his father should be
standing, in his night-shirt, on this very cold morning, under the flaring
gas. It occurred to Peter that as he wanted to laugh at this Mr. Zanti
could not have been right about his lack of humour. Peter walked up to his
father, and his father caught him by the throat. Mr. Westcott was still, in
spite of recent excesses, sufficiently strong.

"I very much want to choke you," he said.

Peter, however, was stronger.

His father dropped the hold of his throat, and had him, by the waist, but
his hands slipped amongst his clothes. For a moment they swayed together,
and Peter could feel the heat of his father's body beneath the night-shirt
and the violent beating of his heart. It was immensely ludicrous; moreover
there now appeared on the stairs Mrs. Pascoe, in a flannel jacket over a
night-gown, and untidy hair about her ample shoulders.

"The Lord be kind!" she cried, and stood, staring. Mr. Westcott was
breathing very heavily in Peter's face, and their eyes were so close
together that Peter could notice how bloodshot his father's were.

"God damn you!" said his father and slipped, and they came down on to
the wood floor together. Peter rose, but his father lay there, breathing
heavily.

"God damn you," he said again, but he did not move.

"You'd better look after him," Peter said, turning to the astounded Mrs.
Pascoe. As he moved he saw a surprising sight, his grandfather's door was
opened and his grandfather (who had not been on his feet for a great many
years) was standing in the middle of it, cackling with laughter, dressed
in a very ugly yellow dressing-gown, his old knotted hands clutching the
sides of the door, his shrivelled body shaking, and his feet in large red
slippers.

"Dear me, that was a nasty knock," he chattered.

And so Peter left them.

The high road was cool and fresh and dark. The sea sung somewhere below
amongst the rocks, and Peter immediately was aware that he was leaving
Cornwall.

Now he had no other thought. The streets of the town were deserted, clean,
smelling of the fields, hay-carts, and primroses, with the darkness broken
by dim lamps, and a very slender moon. His heart was full, his throat
burning. He crossed the market-place and suddenly bent down and kissed the
worn stones of the Tower. There was no one to see.

He was in the station at twenty minutes past seven. The platform was long
and cold and deserted, but in the waiting-room was Mr. Zanti enveloped in
an enormous black coat.

"Ah, my dear boy, this is indeed splendid. And 'ave you said farewell to
your father?"

"Yes, I've said good-bye to every one," he answered slowly. Suddenly he
would have given all the wide world and his prospects in it not to be
going. The terrors of Scaw House were as nothing beside that little grey
town with the waves breaking on the jetty, the Grey Hill above it, the
twisted cobbled streets.

The morning wind blew up the platform, the train rolled in; there were
porters, but Mr. Zanti had only a big brown bag which he kept with him.

Soon they were in corners facing one another. As the train swept past the
Tower the grey dawn was breaking into blue over the houses that rose, tier
by tier, to the sky over the grey rolling breakers, over the hills beyond
... Cornwall!

Poor Peter stared with passionate eyes as the vision passed.

"London soon," said Mr. Zanti, gaily.




CHAPTER XI

ALL KINDS OF FOG IN THE CHARING CROSS ROAD


I

Towards the middle of the dim afternoon as the first straight pale houses
began to close in upon the train, a lady and gentleman on the opposite
side to Peter were discovered by him, as he awoke from a long sleep, to be
talking:

"Well, my dear Lucy, how we are ever to get on if you want to do these
absurd things I don't know. In London one must do as London does. In the
country of course..."

He was short, breathless and a little bald. The lady was young and very
upset.

"But, Henry, what does it matter?"

"What does it matter? My dear Lucy, in London everything matters--"

She was excited. "In Kensington perhaps, but in London--"

"Allow me, my dear Lucy, to decide for you. When you are my age--"

Peter went to sleep again.


II

The vast iron-girdled station was very dark and Mr. Zanti explained that
this was because, outside, there was a Fog--

"The Fog," he added, as though it had been a huge and ferocious animal, "is
very yellow and has eaten up London. It will take us a very long time to
find our home."

To Peter, short and square, in his rough suit shouldering his bag, this
was all as the infernal regions. The vast place towered high, into misty
distances above him. Trains, like huge beasts, stretched their limbs into
infinity; screams, piercing and angry, broke suddenly the voices and busy
movement that flooded the place with sounds. He was jostled and pushed
aside and people turned and swore at him and a heated porter ran a truck
into his legs. And through it and above it all the yellow fog came twisting
in coils from the dark street beyond and every one coughed and choked and
cursed England.

Mr. Zanti, after five minutes' angry pursuit, caught a reluctant and very
shabby four-wheeler, and they both climbed into its cavernous depths and
Peter's nose was filled with something that had leather and oranges and
paper bags and whisky in it; he felt exactly as though Mr. Zanti (looking
very like an ogre in the mysterious yellow light with his bowler on the
back of his head and mopping his face with a huge crimson handkerchief)
were decoying him away to some terrible fastness where it was always dark
and smelly.

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