Until the Colours Fade (23 page)

As the priest said: ‘We therefore commit his body to the grave,’ the bearers removed the pall and coronet and slid the coffin
forward
; the wood grating unpleasantly on the rough stone. Charles saw Helen handed a silver trowel, not, he thought irreverently, unlike a cheese scoop in shape. It was evidently filled with earth or ashes. At the words: ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ she tipped the trowel’s contents onto the lid of the coffin with a hollow pattering sound. Charles gazed at her and felt his heart beat faster. When the New Year came he would renew his quest in earnest. His enforced absence might even prove to his advantage, since she would not be able to accuse him of unseemly haste. This time, he thought, nothing will deter me. Nothing, he
murmured under his breath as she passed him a few feet away.

Five minutes later the mourners emerged thankfully in the open air, coughing with the smoke of the torches, which had also served to make their eyes water befittingly. Being downhill, the journey back to the house was accomplished without difficulty, at an almost unseemly speed.

On the morning after Lord Goodchild’s funeral, Magnus
Crawford
threw open the shutters of his room at the Bull Hotel and looked down into the stable-yard. In the distance he could hear the notes of a key-bugle and then the approaching clatter of a post-chaise on the uneven paving. The activity of the
posting-house
pleased and consoled him. People coming and going,
children
throwing stones into the horse-trough, the post-boys getting ready fresh pairs of horses, ostlers and waiters running out to attend to new arrivals – everyday life continuing as though the election had never taken place. In this atmosphere of bustling normality, Magnus had been able to think of the future without so many regrets for the past.

For three days after the election he had been laid up as a result of his unwise exertions on polling day. Too weak and ill to face the coach journey back to Leaholme Hall, he had stayed on at the Bull, assuring Catherine and Charles that he was being well looked-after and would return home by the end of the week. But before that, he heard that his father had returned, and knowing very well the account Charles would probably have given of his recent doings, Magnus had decided to delay confronting his father until his plans for the future were more fully formed.

Since he had gone down from Oxford without taking a degree, the recognised professions were closed to him; nor did he have any wish to return to the army or the colonial service. Short of becoming a drudging business clerk, journalism seemed not just the best, but probably the only possible occupation for him. In Ceylon he had opened his campaign against the governor with a series of anonymous letters to the
Colombo
Gazette
from ‘A Serving Officer’, and had written additional eye-witness accounts of courts martial and executions: one of which had aroused particular revulsion. The officer in charge, to amuse the firing squad, as Magnus had put it, had placed the condemned men on top of wine casks, so they could be knocked down by the bullets like rag-dolls in a fairground shooting-gallery. Magnus had suggested that, if the Foreign Secretary was prepared, when it suited him, to send the fleet to Piraeus to protect the
commercial
interests of a Spanish Jew living in Athens, simply because
the man had been born in Gibraltar and was therefore entitled to a British subject’s rights of protection, the British Government should have been more attentive to the rights of native British subjects in Ceylon. Whether well-written or not, the effect of these articles and letters had been considerable. Magnus’s recent dealings with the
Rigton
Independent,
although not journalistic, had nevertheless made him aware that, if during the past weeks he had had access to the columns of a national daily newspaper, he could have done far more to influence the course of the
election
than could ever have been achieved by direct action. With the predicted abolition of the newspaper tax, cheaper papers would be certain to increase the power of the press. These
reflections
had made Magnus feel less fatalistic than he had done
immediately
after his humiliation. Uncertain whether he would succeed, he knew at least how he intended to begin. He would try to interest the monthlies in a series of descriptive pieces, which would make an asset of his status as a gentleman and former officer. No gentleman, as far as he knew, had ever worked as a railway navvy or stayed in slum lodging houses and then written about the experience from a gentleman’s point of view; surprise, genteel disapproval and comparisons with his own way of life, all serving to underline the upper classes’ woeful ignorance of the conditions in which the mass of people lived and worked. If these articles aroused the interest he hoped they would, Magnus believed that he would in time be offered more influential
employment
from the editors of daily papers.

During his days of recovery and reflection at the Bull, Magnus had also been forced to acknowledge how much he had come to value Tom Strickland’s company. When he had been in too much pain to return to Leaholme Hall, he had been
surprised
and touched that Strickland had been concerned enough about his condition to remain in Rigton Bridge beyond the date he had previously set for his departure. Apart from his kindness, many other qualities attracted him to Tom: astuteness, a total inability and disinclination to conceal his changes of mood, times of irrepressible enthusiasm, often followed by periods of intense thoughtfulness, and above all a feeling that, like him, Strickland was prepared consciously to take great risks in the pursuit of an illusive goal. Magnus could not fathom precisely what he himself needed to do, but he knew that he could never accept the clearly defined aims of Charles or his father – their lives marked out with a map’s precision. With Tom, the lines were blurred and hard to read; like a pattern which could only be
understood when completed; a life so open to change and
incident
, that nothing could finally be certain until the years had rolled back the entire design. Not having come from a
background
which demanded blind conformity to paternal
expectation
and social appearances, Strickland seemed free in a way which Magnus envied. Life in the army, the navy and the government service evidently meant no more to him than the habits of eskimoes and probably seemed no more important. Apart from liking him, Magnus’s sense that Tom possessed the key to another world made him determined not to lose his new friend when they went their ways from Rigton Bridge.

*

Unlike the Swan and the Green Dragon, the Bull had entirely retained its original character as a small posting-inn. The tavern parlour still had a sanded floor, and old men sat there at oak tables smoking clay pipes, on some evenings singing together. While potage à la bisque, turbot au gratin and cotelettes of this and that could be swilled down with St Emilion at the Swan, the Bull’s landlord stolidly kept to his beef-steaks and pints of port.

Tom Strickland bent his head as he entered the parlour with its wide beams and low bulging ceiling, and looked around almost with nostalgia at the heavy settles on either side of the open fire and the strange selection of prints on the walls: race horses, theatrical scenes, mezzotints of Radical Members. The barman and the pot-boy were lounging behind the bar, but busied themselves when the landlord, a bald corpulent man with an impressive bunch of watch-seals at his fob, came in. He nodded to a farmer in a broad-brimmed hat and coarse
pepper-and-salt
trousers stuffed into muddy gaiters, and then, catching sight of Tom, beckoned to him and led him behind the bar to a small snuggery or private parlour.

Magnus rose smiling from a chair in the chimney-corner. A small table was laid with a white cloth and lit by wax candles; on a sideboard sherry and madeira were comfortably airing
themselves
. Tom had originally been asked to dine, but wanting to leave the town that evening for Manchester to be able to make an early start for London the following morning, he had accepted for lunch instead. Magnus, to Tom’s amazement, was wearing an embroidered smoking jacket over a fine lawn shirt with ruby studs. The effect was more striking since Magnus’s arm was still in a sling. Without speaking he handed Tom a sherry cobbler and raised his own glass. After a moment’s silence he smiled.

‘The future, Tom, and damn the past.’

They both drank and then sat down by the fire. Magnus handed Tom a box of cigars and pushed a low stool under his feet. For the first time since their meeting at the
Independent
’s offices, Tom was carried along by Magnus’s light-hearted mood.

‘Well?’ asked Magnus.

‘Your clothes,’ laughed Tom.

Magnus lit a cigar from a candle and struck an elegant pose in front of the fire.

‘I sent a man for them to Leaholme Hall. Your last day in Rigton Bridge. Special occasions demand the right rig. Didn’t you know what a swell I was before I went abroad? Morning gowns with tassels as large as bell-pulls.’

‘I’ve hardly met anyone less foppish.’

‘Ceylon wasn’t a place for dandies, I admit.’ He puffed at his cigar. ‘No, the point’s symbolic, my dear Strickland … the resurrection of Magnus Crawford, late of the Ceylon Rifles. A few days ago I was ready to crawl out of this town like a whipped dog. Now here I am in my best bib and tucker, ready to face the future as squarely as a man can.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Later,’ said Magnus, raising his glass. ‘Drink up and I’ll tell you something amusing. When Lord Goodchild wanted to keep a railway coach to himself, he used to travel with a boy dressed-up as a chimney sweep. Isn’t that admirable in a way? He also used to offer maiden ladies cigars if he thought them religious.’ Tom did his best to laugh, but could not forget Helen Goodchild’s arrival at the Swan shortly before her husband’s death. ‘Of course,’ Magnus continued, noticing Tom’s slight reserve, ‘I
realise
that eccentricity like that depends on an excellent income and a degree of self-confidence unusual except in madmen, so don’t be hard on me. I knew a lot of fledgling Goodchilds at Oxford – their greatest accomplishments being to get roaring drunk and then wrench off door-knockers or trip up elderly watchmen; a real wit might bark like a dog in college prayers. I like to think I survived my education rather well. It’s a great
consolation
to know how hard it’d be to be sillier than one was.’

‘Don’t English gentlemen always like a challenge?’ asked Tom with a smile.

‘Enough of your mockery, sir,’ replied Magnus, pointing his cigar reprovingly at Tom.

Lunch – the most lavish the Bull had provided for many months – consisted of soup, game, neck of mutton and turnips, followed by Stilton and celery. The maid who served had
coal-black
ringlets, which Magnus said reminded him of gigantic leeches, and Tom suggested would make her an excellent model for Medusa. Afterwards when the cloth had been removed and port and madeira set in place‚ Magnus returned to the fire and sat on the fender.

‘What’ll you do when you’re back in London?’

Tom shrugged his shoulders.

‘Pay off some debts and then … I know what I want to do, but I’ll have to paint some hideous anecdotal subject for the Academy first – a homely and edifying scene. The gambling husband ruined and repentant, his wife tearfully forgiving … or perhaps something from literature. There’s a black crossing-sweeper in Charlotte Street who’ll do very well as Othello.’

‘What happens if the Academy refuses it?’

‘There’s the British Institution or the Portland. Prices are bad, the hanging worse; but pictures get sold.’ Tom drank some port and pushed back his chair. ‘Failing that, I’ll be back to woodcuts for periodicals, restoring stained glass or doing
two-guinea
portraits. I’ve given young ladies lessons in water colour before now.’

‘Don’t you mind that?’ asked Magnus.

‘Of course.’

‘Well then, if the Academy Exhibition is the main chance, why not do three or four for it?’

Tom laughed and cast up his eyes.

‘They take time, and time calls for money.’

Magnus looked at him with excitement and said urgently:

‘I’ve lost you a patron, the least I can do is see you get another. I’ll help you. When you sell the pictures, pay me back. With what I won from George and baubles like these,’ he went on, pointing to his ruby studs, ‘I’ve over a thousand to be going on with.’

Tom looked at Magnus with astonishment.

‘You’ve never even seen my work.’

‘I’m no art critic. I’m sure Joseph Braithwaite’s standards were exacting.’

‘But his taste’s abominable.’

‘All the better,’ replied Magnus easily. ‘You satisfied him so you must be versatile.’ He called for another bottle of port and sat down in the chair next to Tom. ‘How do artists make money?’

‘Society portraits or the sale of engraving rights.’ He paused and looked at Magnus almost angrily. ‘I can’t take your money. I’d have left Braithwaite anyway. Of course I’d have liked a
commission
from Lady Goodchild, but I’m still better off than I’ve
often been in the past.’

‘But you can’t do what you want,’ objected Magnus. ‘You said that.’

‘How many people can?’

‘That isn’t at issue.’

‘But I’ll tell you what is,’ cried Tom. ‘Everything changes if I take your money. Surely you see that?’

‘Tom,’ murmured Magnus, shaken by his outburst, ‘I shan’t need more than four hundred in the next year. I’ll be starting a new career.’

‘Then you’ll need everything you’ve got.’

‘Not if I succeed. If you’re only worried about accepting
anything
from me in case I fail….’

‘That isn’t it at all.’

‘Then prove it by accepting my offer,’ said Magnus
soothingly
. ‘If I make a good living, the loan won’t matter; if I don’t, I’ll have to try something else anyway. Look, if two people trying to do the same sort of thing stick together, the struggle must be easier. If you’re ever in a position to lend me money,
I
won’t refuse out of misplaced pride.’

‘Because you won’t be me.’ Tom looked away. ‘I’ll tell you the job I hated most. To pay my mother’s doctor’s bills I worked for a coach-builder painting coats-of-arms and crests on carriage doors; I wonder if your father used to order from that firm? Of course I’m grateful to you, and I know there’s no condescension in the offer, but it makes no difference.’

Tom’s blushing embarrassment considerably distressed Magnus, who had never intended that he should feel in any way beholden to him.

‘I can assure you,’ he said quietly, ‘that few younger sons take much pride in their position; too poor to marry in their own class, too snobbish to marry out of it, endlessly striving to keep up appearances on inadequate funds … poor things, they have little reason to feel superior to anyone. Being one myself, I ought to know.’

Magnus saw Tom’s expression soften, but he still seemed
perplexed
.