by Ursula Bloom
Tuesdays and Fridays Mr. Minch attended at the expensive nursing home, taking the papers to James Blair to be signed. Secretly he hated these days and felt nervous about them. Also, now he had become James Blair in his own mind, it was difficult to change his manner and become merely Ebenezer Minch for half an hour. He had become as autocratic in the office as for years he had been at home. He could pride himself now on the sly digs which he introduced into his conversation with the girls and that untidy office boy, the blenders and the office at the docks. Whenever they rang up they resented Mr. Minch’s manner, but could do nothing about it. Those who dared say much were bitten into by the acidity of Mr. Minch’s tongue. All those cruel little innuendoes in which James Blair delighted and which had so often cut into Mr. Minch, wealing his soul as rope could weal his body, were now handed out to others. But at the nursing home Mr. Minch had to be halting and subservient, ushered in by a starched nurse, hesitant on the threshold, hat in one hand, papers in the other, glancing from under his bushy brows, so curiously black and grey by contrast, a muscle working in his temple, and looking nervously this way and that.
Then he would have to advance softly, having tried to gather from James Blair’s bearing if this were a suitable moment to be doleful or more cheerful. He would make the inevitable inquiry: ‘I hope you are feeling more yourself, sir?’ only to be ignored, or to be glossed over. James Blair, propped up in bed, would wave a puffy hand in the direction of the chair, a peculiarly uncomfortable one.
‘Sit down, Minch, sit down. What have you brought me to-day?’
That was the signal for Ebenezer Minch to untie the documents, and to bring them out, one by one: the successful orders first, the nibbles from prospective new clients which might please James Blair, and gradually edging through these to the less propitious letters which sent him into shivers. James Blair knew the technique; suddenly he would rap on the bed-table and rasp out:
‘Stop all that mealy-mouthed nonsense. Tell me the worst. Jeffreys, Coll and Stein have cancelled their order? What about the blenders? What about that last consignment?’ And if Ebenezer showed any sign of hesitance, ‘Spit it out, you fool! Don’t sit there beating about the bush.’
It was curious that Ebenezer could admire a man like that, very curious, sometimes it even surprised himself. Yet Ebenezer was himself so warped and bruised by manhandling that now his senses could only respond to the very person who had warped and bruised him so unmercifully. He could appreciate the very barbs that pierced him, and love the wound, and remember the thing that wounded it, and reserve it to take back for some other creature. Miss Helstone and Miss Piper would get their share, and that cross-eyed office boy, the men at the docks, or Jessie. Jessie most of all, because he knew how much it hurt her, and that was amusing.
On the night when she had grilled him cutlets and tomatoes and mushrooms he would sit down and pretend disgust. ‘Surely we had cutlets last week?’
And she, dismayed, and quick to take exception, would colour and say, ‘But I thought you liked them?’
Then he could reply: ‘I do, I do; but variety, my dear Jessie, is desirable, so very desirable. It is the salt of life,’ and knew that it was the very thing that James Blair would have said and in that same acid tone.
Or, when she had turned out the sitting-room and he knew that she was tired and that it would be a cold supper, he could rub his hands as if gleefully anticipating, and say, ‘I could do with a nice hot steak. I’ve been looking forward to it all day,’ and note her sulkiness, and later reproach her for it, remarking that it was the worst of human faults.
James Blair all the time. Always James Blair.
But Mrs. Blair had died in the April of 1915, and the office had subscribed for a suitable wreath of good white flowers, ‘From Mr. Minch and staff’. It had been so suitable. But Marguerite Blair’s death had given Ebenezer ideas, because he would have liked to be a widower, to change house and leave Dulwich for Highgate, which he had always fancied. Only he couldn’t do it.
Janies Blair’s illness had given him his big chance. The impersonation, hitherto only possible in his own home, could be carried into his everyday life. He was James Blair all the time.
Naturally this led to complications when his master returned to the tea office. The thought had been torturing Ebenezer for some time, because he could not imagine how he would bear it. He cringed before the idea. At first James Blair came for two days a week, mornings only, and hot coffee was fetched him at eleven, and his lunch was sent in on a tray from the big restaurant, because he was allowed no unnecessary exertion.
‘He’ll never die,’ said Miss Piper, indignantly, ‘he is the sort as takes too good care of himself and carries out what the doctor says to the very letter. The devil looks after his own too. He’ll never die.’
‘His coming back’s upset our Ebenezer,’ said Miss Helstone; ‘he’s had to go back to kow-towing and making a doormat of himself. Oakum’s his second name.’
This was overheard by Mr. Minch, who was galled by it. He was only too well aware of his oakum tendencies, and hated her for the accuracy of her statement. He always wanted to pose as the autocrat, never as the sycophant which, in his own heart, he knew that he was.
‘Damn all women!’ said Mr. Minch.
He owed them a grudge. He knew quite well that James Blair had made a mistake when he had married Marguerite, and that Ebenezer Minch, copyist, had done exactly the same thing, because Jessie had not lived up to her promise. She was common. She never appreciated her good husband sufficiently, and she liked the small pettiness of Dulwich. But James Blair had got rid of his mistake, and he had gained a son (though he always smiled wryly whenever Ebenezer mentioned the son, with suitable humility), whilst Jessie Minch lived and had no son.
‘Oakum’s his second name.’
One of these days he’d surprise them! One of these days he’d own the tea office, in spite of the ‘and Son’ on the board downstairs. James Blair might be wiry, but Mr. Minch knew enough from the nursing home to apply the fact that his heart wouldn’t stand any tricks. One of these days that heart would stop, paralysed by the consuming anger which burnt like a slowly generating stove in James Blair’s heart.
One of these days, thought Ebenezer Minch.
‘Men!’ said Jessie Minch, ‘I’m sick of men.’
It was in the vegetable shop, with a crowd of other dutiful wives congregated to buy greens. They got there about midday, each carrying some basket or paper bag, and each ready to complain about the wicked prices. With the war over, and all that, you’d really have thought that things would be different. But they weren’t different, said the women, and men expected more for their money, and got less, all of which made for misery in the home. That was when Jessie Minch made this remark.
The road all knew what Ebenezer was; never a smile for any of them, but strutting down the street on the very edge of the kerb, in case he brushed anybody whom he disliked and who was not good enough for him. Hands in the pockets of his greened overcoat, little tight, old-fashioned trousers, and those idiotic button boots.
‘A proper sour one,’ they said, and sympathised with Jessie.
‘Men,’ said she bitingly, ‘expect everything and give nothing.’
‘They support us, anyway,’ said Mrs. Bridges, a bride; and she said it arrogantly. Her hair was yellow, and she used lipstick and rouge, new to the road and not approved. Well, she was still in love. It wouldn’t last, of course; a couple of kids and a few years of washing-days and sitting-room turnouts and haggles over food would change it, as the other women knew. But for the moment Mrs. Bridges was in that fool’s paradise which thinks that life is a honeymoon, man an Adonis, and the brittle beauty of love able to survive the kicks.
She’d find out in time.
Jessie said, ‘You wait a bit, my girl!’ and then wished that she hadn’t, because when one was in that fool’s paradise it was very pleasant; it had even been lovely with Ebenezer. She remembered their ho
neymoon ‒ Lowestoft, more classy than Yarmouth, and you could always get over there easily enough if you wanted fun. The fishing smacks and the old houses, and the broads behind it, with the water that looked like milk, and the dark wherries and the Michaelmas daisies. Everything had been so lovely then, his holding her hand, and speaking softly to her. Wooing her. She’d give a lot to be wooed again.
I’m starved, she thought; sheer starvation in a land of plenty too; it’s a shame.
The women of the road were sour with toil and disappointment, for all the bright steps and shining brasses, for all the clean curtains and panes and the spreading ferns in rotund pots.
My trouble is that I ought to have died, thought Jessie; he copies that beastly Mr. Blair in everything, and he expects me to do the same. I’m not going to die to please him; he’ll die to please me before I’ll do that.
Then she forgot it all in the necessity of choosing a good spring cabbage.
The days at St. Winifred’s passed too soon. Once Mr. Thorne mentioned Dartmouth again. It was at the fathers’ cricket match, a green and gold day, when James Blair sat in the pavilion, his gnome-like head resting on his heavy stick, looking queerly out of place, like some dark splotch against a light background. The gaiety of flowered frocks, of flannels, and of sweet, fresh green were so contrary to the dull city clothes that he wore. Like this he was an outstandingly noticeable figure, which horrified his son, for at school the code was to be inconspicuous, and one’s people were not supposed to break this unwritten law. Mr. Thorne mentioned Dartmouth and was silenced. Hugo, so his father said, would go on to Dover College, and that was settled.
If I had had a mother, thought Hugo, would she have been dressed like that, would she have looked like that? And he knew that she wouldn’t. Imagination painted the unknown mother with a beautiful illusion; she might be a shadow, but she was always a lovely one, a sweet, chiffon-clad ghost with a tender smile.
Hugo went to Dover at the beginning of the Christmas term in 1928. By this time Emily and Mr. Binns had a baby boy, called Launcelot Hugo; Hugo after her charge, Launcelot according to sentimental inclination. In the home he was alluded to as ‘the Nipper’, which eventually got down to ‘Nips’, and Nips Binns it was. This in spite of his high-falutin’ christening, attended by a couple of petty officers as godfathers, and Mr. Binns, looking very stern and swinging the baby’s hat, which he had been told ‘to mind’ by his wife.
Hugo at thirteen was a tall boy, quite unlike his father. His rough, dark hair had clung to its curly tendency, which had landed him in more than one fight already; he had wide, dark eyes, which were profound, and a long, aesthetic face, with a highly sensitive mouth, betokening that within was the power to suffer. Hugo was cut out for a very different type of life from that which was planned for him; but argument was futile, and he knew it. Since his illness James Blair had been more of a dictator than ever; now he could fly into ungovernable fits of rage, and no one but a fool tempted him.
Hugo left for Dover alone. He hated saying goodbye to the Thornes, who had become real friends, and without whom he could not visualise life. He would go back, he kept telling himself, the old boys always had that right; but now he was past a prep school and stepping out into the world. He was far more homesick for the Thornes than he was ever destined to be for Lynton Lodge. Grey flannel shorts and stockings with coral pink tops were done with. He wore trousers, and he was, in his own opinion, almost grown-up. As he neared Dover he felt the same old hammering of nervousness that he had experienced when he had gone to St. Winifred’s; yet now, being older, he had the sense to realise that although to-day he made the journey with trepidation, with the years to come he would make the same journey with enthusiasm. He would be very happy here, and as sorry to leave as he was now reluctant to join.
Last night he had asked his father about his mother. ‘I’d like to see a photograph of her,’ he had dared.
‘I have no such thing. You had better forget her.’
Hesitatingly he inquired: ‘But surely she had some people? It seems so funny that I have no grandparents?’
In a fury James Blair had turned. ‘If you want to know, you have a grandfather, old and senile, as nasty an old rapscallion as ever you want to meet. He is the rector of Sandingford, and he wouldn’t want to know you, so don’t you flatter yourself.’
Hugo had said nothing, but later he had looked at a map in the study, and had located Sandingford just where he had expected it to be, not really too far the Dover side of Canterbury. An idea struck him. He had much of his father’s obstinacy of purpose, and surely he could get permission one half-holiday to visit his grandfather? Even if the old man did not want to see him, he’d rather be quite sure. At Dover he would have a bicycle; it was a necessity for getting to and from the playing fields. He beheld that bicycle much as Aladdin must have seen the lamp, which, when rubbed, would produce riches. It wasn’t riches that Hugo needed, but understanding and relations, and the general feeling that he was really wanted.
He arrived at the school on a dim evening, with the Channel boat just coming alongside the quay. The Matron took charge of the new boys, and showed them their rooms, delicately separate, which he appreciated. He had loved the dorms at St. Winifred’s, but would have disliked the breaking into dorm life here, because he felt a certain shyness about being at school where so many of the boys were practically men.
The little room was small, with its narrow bed and chest of drawers and washhand stand, but a tree, tall and slender, grew beside the window, and he could see Piggy Lee’s garden, with the steps to the terrace, where (though naturally he did not know it then) the School House was wont to stand to have its photograph taken.
He made friends with the other new boys. Little Morton had come here with him ‒ a small, chubbily-made child with an unfortunate habit of giggling, which had got him into trouble in chapel quite frequently. They toured the place and became interested in the ‘toyes’, small wooden sections much like choir stalls in which each boy worked. The name ‘toye’ had been handed down through time and its origin lost. Here generations had sat to study, and had cut initials and written their names, and had rubbed away the flooring with their feet, so that nowadays it was hummocky. He knew then that he was going to be very happy here.
There was the green beauty of the close, the Gothic windows of the refectory and the chapel. Afterwards predominant features stood out in his memory like cameos, cut clearly against dark backgrounds. The night when he sang his song, the old-established ritual for all new boys. He remembered scrambling to the appointed spot, a ledge in the yellow plaster chimney of the junior classroom. It was small, and hard to reach ‒ though much harder for little Morton, who was not so tall as he was ‒ and when he got there, he found it difficult to turn round to sit on the shelf. Ordinarily he could not sing, but he managed to get through a verse fairly well in a cracked, nervous voice. Then one of the more enthusiastic of the audience thrust a newspaper into the fire, and the smoke and flame blew out and set him choking, his eyes tingling and his lips smarting. He was allowed to get down as best he could, and another new boy took his place. He remembered waking to the sound of the bell; going to chapel; to early class. It always amused him to see the wrestling of the duty prefect, whose job it was to close the door on late-comers; and those late-comers, fighting to get in, a boot inserted between door and lintel, and through the gap a glimpse of hot, red, frustrated faces.
At first Hugo was never late, because the new boy’s duty was to draw as little attention to himself as possible. The Christmas term died, the Easter term came and went, and it was not until the summer that he contemplated the trip to Sandingford.
He got a holiday easily, seeing that his request was such an unusual one, and started early from Dover. It would be about twenty-seven miles, he had decided. As the road rose behind the town he could see the boat setting out across the Channel, and hear the sound of the ships’ sirens coming off the sea, faintly wailing. He rode on
, and the country, turning inland, became more verdant. There were trees and fields where the cattle grazed, and the gleam of water from small twisting rivers. The marguerites were in flower and the dog-roses turning pink in the hedgerows. He liked the strong scent of the elder, with its cream smudges of blossom, which looked like a handful of sea surf caught amongst the leaves.
Although the day became very hot he was completely happy, because he felt that now he was on a voyage of discovery, and that he would at last be finding out something about his mother and her people. Three miles the Dover side of Canterbury a signpost pointed the way to Sandingford, and he turned down a pleasant lane, arched greenly and smelling of docks and nettles crushed into the ditches sweet with summer. The road turned, and he realised that the village lay just ahead, in a small cluster of houses, typically Kentish, with the tiled facades and red roofs. There was a small church, with its square belfry and flag of St. George, rising out of greenery, and the uncultured churchyard, with the conglomeration of stones of all shapes, and the weeds and long grasses, that ragged pathos attached to the dead who lie forgotten.
The rectory was obviously the house alongside the church, and a sagging gate turned back against laurels which had at one time been cut into some crude resemblance of an arch. Hugo looked inside, and saw that the house itself was built of stone, large, and not inviting. He went into the village shop, one side of which sold sweets, and had a small desk devoted to postal activities, whilst the other was spread with a bold display of over-yellow haddocks.
‘Which is the rectory?’ he asked.
The woman told him, and it was the house that he had thought. ‘Mr. Hancock’s getting on,’ she said, ‘and although he still takes the services, sometimes he forgets where he is, and makes ever such a muddle at times. Still, he’s been here twenty-five years, and we all like him and wouldn’t have him changed for anything.’
