In the Time of Greenbloom (58 page)

They listened, on the lawn behind the Shrubbery someone was shouting. In syllables shortened by rage yet thick and fat with the vigour behind their pronunciation, they heard the word, ‘Cox'n!' sounding out beneath the moonlight, repeated each time louder and with more fearful emphasis.

“Cox'n!
COX'N
! Call away the Barge.”

“Good God,” said John. “It's the Admiral and he's coming here.”

“Whatever for?”

John got up. “You'll see,” he said. “Quick! We'd better get out. No! wait; we'd better stay here or he'll see us. He may only be drunk.”

“What fun! I adore drunken people, there are hundreds of them in Ireland.”

“You won't adore
him
: he's frightfully dangerous when he's drunk, almost as dangerous as when he's sober. He got chucked off the Magistrate's Bench here the other day for assaulting the local doctor because he disagreed with him over a careless driving case.”

“But why's he coming here?”

“That's just what I don't know.” He pointed to the punt, “You see this thing—this punt?”

“Is it a punt? It doesn't look like one.”

“I know it doesn't, but that's because he's put a roof and brass dolphins and things all over it to make it look like an Admiral's Barge—and unless he's drunk or even if he is drunk, it sounds very much as though he's going to go out in it tonight.”

“
Now
?”

“It sounds like it,” he whispered. “Keep quiet for a minute, he's just coming down the path.”

Standing together in the open mouth of the boathouse concealed by its shadows from the moonlight shining down on the wooden staging which projected over the water they watched the entrance at the farther end of the lake.

They saw Sambo enter first: the luminous vee of his shirt, his normally scarlet face now changed by anger and the moonlight to a leaden-white colour. He walked stiffly with all the reluctance of a military prisoner and was closely followed by the burly silver-haired figure of the Admiral. Even at this distance they could see the Admiral's eyes, whiter than a minstrel's, gleaming out of the dark convexities of his face. Both were carrying things: Sambo with embarrassment,
the Admiral carelessly, and at the first of the balustrades they halted and laid them down on the stone where some minutes earlier Greenbloom had stood his flask.

The Admiral who was wearing dark slacks and an open-necked shirt, wiped his neck and forehead on a silk handkerchief and then turning his back on Sambo bellowed out once again across the lawn.

“
Cox'n! COX'N
! Call away the Barge!”

Somewhere a dog barked, they heard its hysterical response leap-frog out from the kennels round by the Stables and then there was silence.

Sambo spoke. “Really Bodorgan,” he said coldly, “I think this is taking things a little far. I feel that one is entitled to an opinion without being called upon to—”

“Opinion be damned!” replied the Admiral swivelling round to face him. “An insult is not an opinion. You insulted me in me own house and what is more you insulted the Navy and I intend to vindicate the Senior Service here and now.” He glared round once again at the pathway.

“If that feller doesn't come soon—”

“Since it is Saturday night,” said Sambo haughtily, “and Hughes is almost certainly in Beaumaris I think that if you're going to insist on this demonstration it would be as well if we postponed it until tomorrow.” He stepped towards the entrance and, beside John, Dymphna shivered. He saw that in her anxiety she was biting her lower lip and that her eyes were wide.

“Are they really serious?” she whispered.

“Of course they are, they hate each other like poison—over Lady G—and they've obviously emptied the better part of a bottle of whisky between them.”

“But they can't be—even in Ireland—”

The Admiral spoke again. “I think I ought to warn you, Stretton, that if you are intending to return to the house I shall have no hesitation in shooting you—in the back. I have my Father's revolver here and it is fully loaded.”

Sambo halted at once and turned round.

“Either you are drunk, Bodorgan, or else you are mad,” he said distinctly.

The Admiral smiled dangerously and they saw the shine of his large false-teeth as he looked across at his adversary over the shaking barrel of an old-fashioned revolver which he carried in his right hand.

“I am posting you as my Cox'n with effect as from—pass me my chronometer—”

In the pause, after a momentary hesitation, Sambo picked up a round object like a clock and handed it to him.

“With effect as from 22.30 hours today, G.M.T.,” went on the Admiral, “and keep your distance.”

“If you took my remark about the Admiralty as a reflection on your own seamanship, Bodorgan—” began Sambo.

“You will address me as Sir,” said the Admiral, “and you will bring aboard my chronometer, compass, my night-glasses, sextant and barometer.”

“I am perfectly prepared to withdraw my remarks unconditionally—Sir,” said Sambo distinctly.

“You will then propel my Barge according to instructions,” went on the Admiral remorselessly, “while I prove to you that His Majesty's sea lords are
not
incapable of navigating ‘anything but a desk through a sea of paper—' Those were your words I believe?”

“I repeat, Sir, that I am perfectly ready to withdraw them. I think we might return to the house before Gerry”—they saw Sambo's hand go to his moustache as he corrected himself—“before Lady Geraldine—”

“My wife, whatever her other failings may be,” interrupted the Admiral swiftly, “knows better than to interfere with my
professional
dispositions, and as for the withdrawal of your remarks about the Service, it's too damned easy to recant when the damage is done, when a good name and a reputation have been smirched.” He paused and then spoke more quietly and with heavy emphasis. “You may, if you care to, look upon myself and my colleagues of equivalent rank as a group of impotent bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the realities
of situations—either private or public. If that is your opinion you are entitled to it provided, Stretton, you do not express it in my presence. When you do that it ceases to be an opinion, as I said before, and becomes an
insult
, one which it is my duty to redress without delay.” He drew himself to attention and waved his revolver at the equipment on the balustrade. “You will now give me that opportunity.”

With what was almost a shrug, a quick shake of his shoulders, Sambo picked up the things and followed by the Admiral marched briskly towards the boathouse.

“What shall we do?” whispered Dymphna.

“Out, quickly!”

Together they moved silently out through the open door and round to the shadowed side of the structure pressing close against the timbered wall.

From the inside they heard the Admiral bawling out his further instructions.

“You will light both lamps, port and starboard, and show a light at the masthead. It will be your duty to stream the log in order that I may make the necessary calculations, and in due time you will keep her steady fore and aft while I bring down the moon to the horizon and read my charts—”

Under cover of the noise, the clatter of things being loaded into the punt, the indignant throat-clearances of Sambo, the Admiral's rounded roars, they slipped away together along the upper flagged terrace past the figure-heads leaning out of the shadows, the tall flag-staffs and the chimney-stacks belching their still tufts of heather and geraniums.

At the far end, safely under cover of the rhododendrons concealing the pathway, they paused and looked back.

The punt was sliding out into the centre of the lake, riding through the bright lattice of the moonlight with the Admiral, portly and erect as one of his own statues, standing in the bows with his sextant raised to the stars; and behind him, between the gleam of the brass dolphins whose curling tails flanked the little cabin, Sambo, punting with slow rhythmical strokes.

Standing there, side by side, they continued to watch; hearing the thrust of the water against the punt, the succession of falling drops from the pole, the sounds of their own breathing.

John spoke:

“I
thought
—” he said.

“What?”

But he did not reply. He had not intended to speak: a great grief weighed down upon him out of Heaven.

“Tell me—” she whispered as once, long ago, Victoria might have whispered; wanting to know, wanting to share, not quite serene in the eagerness of her generosity. “What did you think?”

“All
that
—” he said loudly pointing to them: to old Clive and Sambo.

“They're pathetic, aren't they?” she suggested.

“I don't know,” he said. “They hate each other. They're doing nothing, they don't see anything, they don't know anything. They can think about nothing but their hatred although they're so old—Lady Geraldine, who's beautiful really I suppose: but
alive
! If she were dead—”

“Yes?”

“If she were dead, what would it solve?”

“I don't know what you mean. What
do
you mean?”

“Well,” he said, “once there were two people who loved the same person; and she died. I was one of them and I'd always thought that if only I could find someone like her, someone who seemed exactly like her in the way she affected
me
I mean, that it would stop my hatred, all
that
sort of thing: those two out there under the moon,” he swallowed. “Lunatics, respectable lunatics, fools, apes, old bodies and malice, men who should be wise because they've finished growing; wise enough to say, to know, to see; but they can't even
say
. They're liars both of them, blind to their own lies. They're no better than I was when once I thought I was mad, blamed it on someone else who probably
is
mad, unrespectably mad, if you understand me. But now I'm
frightened, terrified to think that I may never have been mad, that there may be no sanity anywhere for any of us whether we love or hate, find or lose, live or die.”

They were silent. The punt had nearly reached the middle of the lake, Sambo had ceased to pole because the water was too deep for him, and under the high night there was no single sound to be heard.

“I know what you mean,” she said, “but I think you're wrong.”

“Where?”

“Well, in a way you're sorry for them, aren't you? That's what makes you so angry, your sorrow.”

“Perhaps,” he said, not touching her. “Let's go and find Greenbloom; he wanted to see this. I think if we could get him alone, by himself, he might be able to—say.”

“Listen!” she said.

The Admiral spoke. His voice rich with the satisfaction of someone perfectly in command of a situation he has long anticipated, they heard his command roll out across the disturbed surface of the water: ‘Half speed ahead and steady the Barge, Cox'n—' before they turned and ran hand in hand across the lawn to the drive, the lights, and the moving group of small figures gathered together in front of Greenbloom's car.…

Maidstone
, 1953–1955.

AN END

Gabriel Fielding was the pen name of Alan Gabriel Barnsley, a British novelist born in Northumberland, England. His most famous works include
In the Time of Greenbloom
,
The Birthday King
and
The Women of Guinea Lane
.

Fielding's father was an Anglican vicar at Hexham and his mother, Katherine Fielding Barnsley, was a descendant of the novelist Henry Fielding. Barnsley's pen name was derived from his illustrious ancestor.

Barnsley earned a B.A. from Trinity College, Dublin in 1939, with prizes in Anatomy, Oratory and Biology. He graduated in Medicine from St. George's Hospital, London in 1943. He was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War II.

His first book,
The Frog Prince and Other Poems
, was published in 1952 in England.

In 1966 Barnsley moved to the United States, where he was author-in-residence at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. He also became a full professor of English literature there, retiring in 1981 as professor emeritus. In 1964 he was awarded the W.H. Smith Award for
The Birthday King
, and for “the most outstanding contribution to English Literature over a two-year period” (1962–1963).

He was married to Edwina Eleanora Cook with whom he had five children. He died in Bellevue, Washington on November 27th, 1986.

Discover books by Gabriel Fielding published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/GabrielFielding

In Time of Greenbloom
The Birthday King
Pretty Doll Houses