Through Streets Broad and Narrow (13 page)

“Must
you?”

“Sorry.”

“It's not just the bloodsome noise; but, also, you're out of time.”

“If only we had some women,” John said.

“If only we had some whiskey. Go and get a couple of glasses.”

“Are there no women in Offaly? My God, if I had a ballroom like this I'd simply fill it with women.”

But Palgrave was away again his eyes half-closed, a Melachrino drooping between his lush lips. “Jameson, not Scotch,” he instructed, “in the hall.”

“Someone's rocking my dream-boat
Someone's invading my dreams.”

John jumped down onto the floor and waltzed away up the empty room. This is Toad Hall and I'm Ratty. First we play with Toad's train and then we listen to his tenor; tomorrow we'll go to Toad's Church—on the estate no doubt—for Mattins; Toad was obviously Low Church.

Unremarked either by Claire Maunde or by the Captain he collected two glasses of whiskey and soda and returned to the ballroom.

They drank and mooned for another hour and then John said, “I'm going to bed.”

“But it's dreadfully early; the others won't have gone yet.”

“What does that matter?”

“We'll have to talk to Cac Wac for at least an hour. Stay with me,” Palgrave implored, “I'm frantically lonely.”

“If you'll let me play the drums,” said John, contracting the other's petulance.

“My dear, I can't possibly; they'd be furious. Be an angel and stay just half an hour and then we'll have the place to ourselves. I'll sing anything you like.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm depressed—extremely.”

“But so am I! Let's be depressed together. If only you knew how lonely I was, worse here even than at Trinity.”

“Why come then?”

“It's home,” sang Palgrave. “ ‘Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away!' Sing with me, John?”

“Drums or nothing.”

“Really, you are difficult,” Palgrave said. “Life could be so simple—‘I hear their gentle voices calling.'”

“The only other thing I could ever play was the Swanee whistle; you haven't got one, have you?”

“You're so pathetic,” said Palgrave, drifting into “Swanee, how I love you, Swanee.”

“I know I am,” said John. “Sweet, too. You think I'm sweet because you're in love with me. I think Dymphna's sweet because I'm in love with her.”

“Could be,” said Palgrave, “but personally I think she's dreadful, so eager all the time and spare. The only sort of woman I like is someone bosomy that I can go to sleep on and even that's rather boring.” He sang a few more words of the lyric:

“When you smile you're so delightful
When you talk you're so insane …”

and resumed, “I suppose I'm immature, really.”

“Dymphna is heaven,” said John. “I'm going to bed to think about her.”

Palgrave closed the piano and finished his drink. He pursued his own line of thought. “But I've never been able to see why it's considered more mature to want to slobber over some dreary little creature in brassière and pants than it is to— Oh, God, I'm so bored.”

When John got up to his bedroom he couldn't sleep. He looked out through the mist beyond the windowpanes to the Christmassy radiance of the moonlight on a cedar tree made starry by the wet on its foliage, and thought of Dymphna, Victoria, Grania de Savigny, and Dymphna again. He was reminded of his night on the moors, the night Victoria had disappeared with her murderer after the picnic in the cave, the night he had
lain awake listening for the sounds of her mother's weeping, of George Harkess' comings and goings and the rumblings of the pipes in the farmhouse walls.

The fire in the bedroom had gone out but the pervasive scent of the turf still smouldering in the hall reached him where he lay, bringing with it the very silence and threat of the Yorkshire landscape on that remembered night. He attempted to block the flood of these memories and the mood they evoked, but the similarity of the circumstances defeated him.

Now, as then, he was a guest in an uneasy household, loving Dymphna as once he had loved Victoria. Here, as there, his fearfulness of losing her seemed malformed and absurd against the sanity of the Captain and Claire Maunde, so like the affair between George Harkess and Enid Blount; so like, until he had shattered all dullness for them as he told them the news of Victoria's disappearance.

He might have been twelve again as he got out of bed and walked the strange room waiting for that morning when the inspector arrived to question him, to cover the moors with his dogs, to ask him to lead the police back to the cave, the very place of their picnic, and to the body of Victoria herself lying a little way beyond it.

The coldness of it all touched him again, the cruel uncertainties, the crueller certainties. Between loving and fearing the abyss opened for him again as he stood motionless by the end of his bed. There was no more delimiting of the actual time he endured than there had been on that other day four years later when he had recognized her murderer on a South Coast beach. The pause in his consciousness was as long or as short as it had been then; but this time, being older, he was able to seize more adroitly the small things which recalled him to the present.

He remembered painstakingly the whole course of his real evening and its events: Palgrave's pathetic serenading, his desire to reply to it by escaping from it, his frustration on being prevented from playing the drums. He put on his dressing-gown and, letting himself silently onto the landing, went down the stairs to the hall. The fire there had been banked by Murphy for the night, but in its centre the rich turf glowed and trembled
like a beating heart. He stirred it gently and brought it to a prickle of flame with fir cones from a rush basket.

The light played over the painted ceiling, on the paired columns supporting the landing and brought out the colours on the tilted side drums. He saw the gilt lettering of their battle honours, the rich regimental crests.

He took one down carefully and adjusted the sling round his neck. With his fingers he began to tap out the metre of a march whose title he could not remember. He drummed a little louder than he had intended. Somewhere far beyond the hall, in the basement, he thought, he heard a muffled scream. Horrified, he slipped the strap over his head and rehung the drum on its pillar. After waiting a few minutes longer he went cautiously back to his room again. Once safely in his bed, he slept easily.

In the morning, breakfast was delayed; because, after the night's disturbances, the staff had decided to stay on for a service called Benediction which evidently succeeded the usual Mass. They did not come back up the drive in their donkey cart until nearly eight o'clock and the household was consequently disjoined and disgruntled.

Why can't they get breakfast themselves? John thought as he sat with the others in the hall. That woman Claire ought to go down to the kitchen and fry up a few eggs, Palgrave and I could lay the table and even that idiot Cac Wac could stoke up the fire and saw Murphy's wood for him.

Cac Wac asked them repeatedly, “You two, are you sure you heard nothing last night?”

“Only vaguely,” said Palgrave.

“Nothing,” said John again. “As I told you, I was too tired after the walk over at the de Savigny's.”

“Damn queer. Now Shelagh heard it all right and so did one of the servants. That makes three. Haven't been able to question Murphy yet.”

“God!” said Claire Maunde to no one, though everyone knew what she meant.

The Captain, on an empty stomach was, for once, nettled. “These things have a meaning, my girl. Shelagh tells me there's a legend attached to it. I won't specify it, but for all you know
it could be one of us that's going to kick the bucket within the month.”

“How true. We'd all better examine our consciences.”

Later, on the way to Mattins in the Estate Church, Claire Maunde said, “Bruce is writing a long letter to his man in the caravan.”

“Much better come to Mattins,” said old Chamberlyn-Ffynch. “Always was a superstitious fellow, even as a subaltern, so I'm told.”

They were late for the service and all the non-Catholic tenants were waiting between the lych-gate and the western door, with the incumbent himself, the Reverend Charles Wilson, an Orangeman of humble aspect, standing in the porch to greet them.

They were shown by the verger to the family gallery above the porch. There were red hassocks in the high pitch-pine stalls and very little light came in through the stained-glass window depicting the giving of the tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai.

The Reverend Charles Wilson started to preach what was evidently intended to be a long sermon, but after about twenty minutes in which he showed no sign of reaching the peroration, old Chamberlyn-Ffynch suddenly stood up and, in the manner of Sir Roger de Coverley, tapped the front of the pew three times with his spectacle case.

The Reverend Mr. Wilson completed two or three more sentences, half-enunciated a third, crossed himself hurriedly and went back to the altar. Apart from a little girl in the front row, none of the congregation looked up at the gallery, which suggested that their patron's interruption was so customary that it was almost an expected part of the service.

The lady at the harmonium played a hymn and very soon the service was over. Outside the porch everyone was lined up waiting for the gallery party to leave, which it did not do until Mr. Wilson was ready to accompany them back to the Hall for a glass of sherry and a bunch of blue grapes from the conservatory. He was not invited to lunch.

When the time came to say goodbye old Chamberlyn-Ffynch was damnably polite. He shook hands and said, “Hope to see
you again sometime.” Then he went back into his study to make up the game books or sleep.

Cac Wac was certainly asleep, glowing in a hall chair and Claire Maunde was reading her novel and smoking Turkish cigarettes. She said, “Have a good drive,” without looking up and waved a long hand at them.

In the car John was thinking, When people are most polite when you're leaving it's often a sign that you were not a success. Though of course it could simply be that we, by which he meant the family or the not-County, are habitually more demonstrative; and if that is “common” of us I still prefer it; and at this point Palgrave said, “I'm afraid you weren't altogether a success, really.”

John was extremely taken aback at this and reacted with a dismayed humility. He said, “I can't honestly see where I went wrong. I liked them all, as a matter of fact. Cac Wac was a healthy bore but I thought he treated me rather well. By the way, I never even saw Shelagh.”

“One doesn't as a rule. Shelagh only appears for rather special guests.”

And John, who was now more angered by the cowardice of his humility than by the cause of it, thought, I hope that Shelagh dies as a result of the fright I gave her. But he said, “I'm sorry I let you down, because the weekend was a great experience for me. I've always wondered about the aristocracy; I was fascinated by all the tenants lining up outside the church door like that this morning. Then there was your great grandmother's room—it was practically royal—and she herself looked like a queen. The shape of her face makes me believe in breeding. To tell you the truth I've always been a bit sceptical about it before; but now I can see that your people
are
different. There's something about the house, the way of life, the order of the hours and days. Your father has a tremendous presence. Honestly, I'd give anything to have him approving of me; but I suppose—?”

“Oh, I don't think he disliked you.”

“No, perhaps not; it's just that he's of a different era?”

“Well, you see, he's not quite used to—”

John interrupted, “But I thought I got on rather well with Grania de Savigny?”

“They're badly off. Grania gets frantically
bored.”

John thought, Well you're not too well off yourselves and my God, since that door is for ever shut to me I hope the country gets in. I hope all the fields run into marsh and bog, that moss grows on the stairs and the pigs get swine fever. I hope for all these things and for the early barren death of all heirs to all heirs to all manors, baronetcies, marquisates and dukedoms, because I know I was not accepted until it was time for me to go. There should be a new sort of aristocracy which will recognize
me
as an aristocrat. It will be exactly like the old one only richer, more arrogant, cold and splendid.

Palgrave asked him to have dinner with him in the Ranelagh Club but John was lost in the prospect of seeing Dymphna that evening. She would know only that he had spent the weekend at Ffynchfort and walked in terraced gardens with Grania de Savigny. And tomorrow I am going to work, he said to himself. I will work like mad, like someone in a book or a film. Aristocrats have to die. As a Harley Street man I shall hold their lives and livers in the hollow of my hand. Also I shall know more things than how to shoot woodcock and jacksnipe.

So Palgrave dropped him off in Stephen's Green, saying, “I'm sorry you won't have din with me. I thought we might go along to my rooms afterwards and have some music together.”

“Sorry, but I'm dying to see Dymphna.”

“Well, I shall probably see you tomorrow; I'm playing squash with D'Arce Smith at the Club after lunch, but we could meet for a drink at about five.”

“For the rest of this term I've got to work like fury.”

Palgrave said, “Why the sudden hurry?”

“It's not sudden.”

“If you want to know what I think, Grania did rather approve of you.”

“Oh, Grania.”

“Won't you drop into the Club tomorrow, John? I think it'd be a good idea. After all, if I put you up for membership later on?”