The Keys of the Kingdom Read Online Free PDF

ended his nightly tramp from Darrow Shipyard by veering wearily towards the blistered double headboard of Glennie’s Bakery, he had reached a great decision. As he trudged down the floury passage dividing the bakehouse from the shop – his smallish figure oddly suppressed by an outsize suit of dungarees, his face grimy, beneath a man’s cloth cap worn back to front – and went through the back door, placing his empty lunch pail on the scullery sink, his dark young eyes were smouldering with this purpose.
    In the kitchen Malcom Glennie occupied the table – its soiled cover now, as always, littered with crockery – lolling on his elbow over Locke’s Conveyancing , a lumpish pallid youth of seventeen, one hand massaging his oily black hair, sending showers of dandruff to his collar, the other attacking the sweetbread cooked for him by his mother on his return from the Armstrong College. As Francis took his supper from the oven – a twopenny pie and potatoes cremated there since noon – and cleared a place for himself, aware, through the torn opaque paper on the half glazed partition door, of Mrs Glennie serving a customer in the front shop, the son of the house threw him a glance of peevish disapproval. ‘Can’t you make less noise when I’m studying? And God! What hands! Don’t you ever wash before you eat?’
    In stolid silence – his best defence – Francis picked up a knife and fork in his calloused, rivet-burned fingers.
    The partition door clicked open and Mrs Glennie solicitously scuffled in. ‘Are you done yet, Malcom dear? I have the nicest baked custard – just fresh eggs and milk – it won’t do your indigestion a mite of harm.’
    He grumbled: ‘I’ve been gastric all day.’ Swallowing a deep bellyful of wind, he brought it back with an air of virtuous injury. ‘Listen to that!’
    ‘It’s the study, son, that does it.’ She hurried to the range. ‘But this’ll keep your strength up … just try it … to please me.’
    He suffered her to remove his empty plate and to place a large dish of custard before him. As he slobbered it down she watched him tenderly, enjoying every mouthful he took, her raddled figure, in broken corsets and dowdy, gaping skirt, inclined towards him, her shrewish face with its long thin nose and pinched-in lips doting with maternal fondness.
    She murmured, presently: ‘I’m glad you’re back early tonight, son. Your father has a meeting.’
    ‘Oh, no!’ Malcom reared himself in startled annoyance. ‘At the Mission Hall?’
    She shook her narrow head. ‘Open air. On the Green.’
    ‘We’re not going?’
    She answered with a strange, embittered vanity: ‘It’s the only position your father ever gave us, Malcom. Until he fails at the preaching too, we’d better take it.’
    He protested heatedly. ‘ You may like it, Mother. But it’s damned awful for me, standing there, with Father Bible-banging, and the kids yelling “ Holy Dan”. It wasn’t so bad when I was young, but now when I’m coming out for a solicitor!’ He stopped short, sulkily, as the outer door opened and his father, Daniel Glennie, came gently into the room.
    Holy Dan advanced to the table, absently cut himself a slice of cheese, poured a glass of milk and, still standing, began his simple meal. Changed from his working singlet, slacks and burst carpet slippers, he was still an insignificant and drooping figure in shiny black trousers, an old cutaway coat too tight and short for him, a celluloid dickey and a stringy black tie. His cuffs were of celluloid too, to save the washing; they were cracked; and his boots might have done with mending. He stooped slightly. His gaze, usually harassed, often ecstatically remote, was now thoughtful, kind, behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. As he chewed, he let it dwell in quiet consideration on Francis.
    ‘You look tired, grandson. Have you had your dinner?’
    Francis nodded. The room was brighter since the baker’s entry. The eyes upon him now