The Early Life of James McBey by James McBey

Author:James McBey [James McBey / Nicolas Barker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847675873
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

V

At this time I was in charge of the ‘clearing desk’ at the bank. One of my duties was to go every afternoon to the manager in his room and show him my book wherein were the totals of the cheques cleared by the various banks that day.

He was a big stout man with a large bald head, features resembling Bismarck and an abrupt manner, never wasting a word. Invariably, day after day, he glanced at the amounts in my list and gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

I had been absent for three days. On the first day I resumed work after the funeral no one had remarked on my absence, or the reason for it, until, when I was showing the manager my totals, he said, to my astonishment, ‘You have been ill?’

‘No sir, my mother died.’

‘What did she die of?’

His question was so unexpected I failed to prevaricate.

‘She committed suicide.’

‘What?’

‘She hanged herself.’

His solemn pale bulbous eyes glanced up at me from their red rims for a second, then without a word he resumed his writing of a letter. (More than twenty years afterwards, long after he had retired from the bank, several of his friends were, in his presence, commenting on the extraordinary luck which Providence had seen fit to bestow on me. His terse contribution to the discussion— ‘I’m sorry for that man’—completely mystified the group. This was told me later by one who was present, possibly on the chance I might elucidate the remark.)

On my way home that first day I saw from a distance a dense group of people clustering in front of the Free Press office, each individual striving to read the news bill apparently newly hung out in front of the window. Alarm seized me. It could only mean that the press had found out and published that which I prayed might remain secret.

Cautiously, in utter dread of what I might see, I attached myself to the edge of the group waiting my chance to get a glimpse of what I feared. I started violently when a hand strongly gripped my arm, and turned to face Inspector Wilson. In a low voice, without preamble, he said in my ear, ‘Don’t worry; they’ve discovered nothing. I think you’re safe now.’

My relief was so great that my knees almost gave way.

Annie, I knew, used to have a few personal trinkets in a small wooden box she kept locked. Several days after the funeral I found a key which opened it. The contents consisted of a string of blackish sweet-smelling beads, like sheep droppings, that my grandmother recalled my wearing when a baby, a small gold watch that had belonged to Jane, Annie’s silver watch, and a silver locket and its chain. Inside the locket was a photo of Annie as a girl and behind the glass facing it, a small folded scrap of newsprint.

Gently flattening it out, not knowing what to expect, I found, trimly torn from a newspaper, a poem entitled

‘The Suicide’

No one will weep

or sigh that I had gone.

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