The Stranger from the Sea

by Paul Binding

  On the fourth of July itself, a night troubled, like its predecessors, by reflections disruptive of peace of mind, I woke up to a morning already pretty hot and, as I looked out of my dormer window, possessed by a curious thick whiteness in which—somehow matching my first thoughts—all the usual components of the scene appeared to be stranded. Some kind of summer sea-fret, I supposed, that nobody had yet told me about. After all, even though I sometimes felt I’d been living here for a century at least, I hadn’t yet experienced the full course of one Dengate summer. However, another look out of the window before descending for a breakfast that I, for once, scarcely felt like consuming made me see that it was the roof of the sky itself that was white. On the ground, the walls, roofs, trees, and houses were clear enough in all their outlines, but once I moved my gaze to the Channel I saw it was hung with haze; not the merest suggestion of France or French-bound ships today!

  “None of us feels like eatin’ in this, so we don’t,” said Sarah, when after stumbling down to the kitchen, I tried to explain my rare want of appetite this morning, “’Tis the devil’s own heat. And we have that Mr. Postbox friend of your comin’ at lunch-time, and a right pity it is, I’m thinkin’.”

  Well, I am not sure that I didn’t think the same. Will had been decidedly cavalier about informing me of his movements—and in a place more mine than his!—but naturally I knew he was to be here, attending all events, hobnobbing with everybody great and small, particularly the former, a conspicuous and ubiquitous presence with his busy pencil and natty sketchbook, doing drawings of the Great Day that would elicit all the cooing cries of admiration so apparently necessary to his well-being, and the success of which, in both newly executed and newly published forms, would swell his already swollen head even more. If that were possible!

  “I shouldn’t think a spot of sun will take your Mr. Postbox’s appetite away,” said Sarah with the sourest of smiles, as she brought in the milk-jug for the coffee. She had shown an unexpected ingenuity in finding variations on old Will’s surname: “Postman,” “Postchaise,” “Posthorn,” “Postcard,” the most derisive being “Postboy.”

  “I doubt it will,” I agreed, thinking a little disloyalty might do me good, for, the more I let the imminence of this third visit of his sink in, the less pleased I felt. “My friend Will is, not to mince matters, distinctly greedy.”

  And he will be flirting with not a pretty little widow, as he thinks but a wife who denies her true status, just as she has her widowhood. Whatever would Will make of that? True, my knowledge of my friend’s relations with the opposite sex sprang from his own boastful talk of his exploits or from casual sauciness delivered to pretty passing girls. Of his real taste in women, let alone his intimate dealings with them, I knew considerably less.

  This important Saturday morning was surely even hotter than any of its predecessors that week. Above the stillness, above the white nebulous layers high in the sky, there was, one felt, a tug-o’-war of some kind going on—a vast sheet of white paper perhaps about to be torn in two by an invisible warring pair. Back in the offices of the newspaper even the draught from those two opened windows—the courant d’air, Barton always called it, remarking rightly that the French term was far better than our one English word—failed to do its needed work. It was airless almost to the point of suffocation. However, it had a unifying effect on the whole team; the others quite forgot to look askance at yours truly, but included him in the general exchange of commiserating glances: fancy us having to work in all this, and on this day of days too.

  The Advertiser’s involvement in the Grand Opening was, readers will already have surmised, extensive, having given it advance publicity every week for the past month and a half. Only right then that both Edmund Hough and Thomas Betterton had seats actually inside the bandstand itself, would be, in other words, elevated as town worthies above the rest of the audience, alongside the borough’s official dignitaries, the mayor, and the six aldermen and eighteen councillors who had chosen him, and such eminences as Sir Greeley Donaldson (of course!), the Vicar of the Dengate’s Parish Church of St. Peter’s, the Vicar of St. Luke’s (Lucinda Hough’s church), the Methodist and Congregationalist ministers, Father Mahoney from Sarah’s church, the director of the Royal Hospital, the harbor-master, the captain of the lifeboat service, a local admiral, the headmasters of Dengate Grammar School and of St. Stephen’s, Kingsbarrow, the curator of the Royal Gardens, the chief architect of the Bandstand, and the head of the local building firm responsible for its construction.

  “And Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and All,” remarked Philip Goodenough predictably, with a sour smile, after yet another discussion of the placement for the afternoon, but in truth his jest was inapt. Who sat where told you a great deal about the values of a society which took the keenest and most palpable pleasure in bestowing trappings and doling out rewards such as the best seats at a ceremonial concert. It was himself and his like (me, for instance) who fell into the proverbial category of Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, yet were we not given chances, every day, to raise ourselves up? Wasn’t this the late nineteenth century, so different from any other epoch in history? Hadn’t I myself, coming from obscurity, been given such a chance and wasn’t I muffing it pretty thoroughly?

  Edmund came out of his own office into the main one, sweating and sighing: “Oh dear, oh dear!” he exclaimed to the room at large, making even the imperturbable Terence Hathaway look up startled. “Even the best laid plans can falter, and sometimes through the very person who most wants to be of help.”

  He then explained. Each luminary seated up on the Bandstand was to receive, gratis, both a booklet-style explanatory program of the inaugurating concert and a handbill listing other activities taking place in the Royal Gardens after it was over; indeed the second publication would be slipped between pages 5 and 6 of the first. But owing to a misunderstanding (by Leslie Midgeley at Barrett Brothers—“the nicest, the most Christian of men who thought he was doing me a good turn”) separate parcels of both items had been delivered that morning to Furzebank House itself. Edmund ran his fingers through his hair in gentle despair at this unnecessary well-intentioned mishap.

  “The best that could be done now, as I see it, is for those programs and those handbills to be collated, and then sent down to Mr. Higginson at the Bandstand ready for distribution on the allocated seats. But who up at my own house could carry out that task? My wife is not feeling at all well in this appalling heat—her condition, you know!”—meaningful looks all ’round here; nobody had officially been told of Susan Hough’s latest pregnancy—“my eldest son and daughter are not due in Dengate till later on, my son George is at school this morning (where else?), and my daughter Lotty has taken the Little Ones over to their cousins, and so there remains in sole charge of the household only our faithful relative, Miss Woodison but she . . . well . . .”

  Well indeed! Having met the woman in question I could see exactly why Edmund would not want to trust that job, simple as it might sound, to so dithery an individual. “I was wondering if—well, Peter, I know the good Thomas has got you checking that report from the Marina Railway about its finances, and Barton, you are occupied with the captions for Will Postgate’s perfectly splendid drawings”—I had rather felt that should have been my task, but was glad that it wasn’t—“so that leaves you, I’m afraid, Martin. I shall go and dig into our coffers to find you money for a cab, which will have to wait up there and then take the stuff (and you with it) down to the Royal Gardens. Anyway I am sure Miss Woodison will make you most welcome at Furzebank.”

  I had no doubt of it, and a talkative welcome it would be, probably getting in the way of my discharging my (easy enough) duties.

  Two cabbies were out at the entrance to Dengate Station waiting for fares, their lovely chestnut horses perspiring miserably with the sheer exertion of just standing stock-still in harness in such sweltering, thirsty-making conditions.

  “Furzebank House,” I gasped out, “that’s
right up at the top of—

  ” “I know where Furzebank House is, young feller-me-lad, no help required, thank you very much,” said the cabbie whom I chose out of the two apparent equals. “Been goin’ up there when you was crawlin’ about on the floor, and couldn’t string two words together.”

  I had not been up to Edmund’s house since that May Sunday when, emotionally, so many, too many things had happened. For what reason would I have done so? I had fallen into his Dep Ed’s bad books, and therefore it would not really have been politic for its owner to have invited such a person as me back, though once or twice, in rather unspecific terms, he (Edmund) had hinted that he would like to do so. On my first visit the residential roads and lanes climbing up to the bare, open down-land it stands beneath had been adorned with lilac, laburnum, hawthorn and—need I remind readers?—Edmund’s and George Meredith’s beloved gorse, the bloom which had given the place its name. Today, July 4, all these were gone, the green of leaves was darker, duller, the color of the copper beeches a somber brown not the luminous pink-tinged hue that makes them so appealing at the start of a season, and in the gardens there now flourished lupins, delphiniums, peonies, campanula, and roses, roses, everywhere roses, their united scent becoming an element as palpable as air or water the nearer we were to the land adjacent to the house. Incongruously this aroused in me a memory of physical passion—and there was only one person in the world with whom I had experienced that, and he was far away by a fjord looking up at granite mountains! Passing that signpost worded TO FURZEBANK HO I recalled that the one and only time a conveyance had taken me down this narrow lane (now lined with tea-roses) Hans indeed had been sitting beside me, soon to be charming his hosts with his combination of sweetness, resoluteness, adaptability, and complete lack of affectation. And it had been on the very night following this visit that we had expressed our delight in each other . . .

  Well, for today (maybe forever!) best to concentrate on the lane and on the nut-orchards beyond (same old geese in them sensibly keeping now to the shade of the trees). And here we were turning into that untidily cluttered yard, and here, on hearing the clopping of the horse and the scrape of wheels, coming out of a door in the side-wall at this time of year covered in rambler roses, was—no, not Miss Woodison, though for a split-second, the gait and attitude of the head made me think her that good, dependable eccentric but—Lucinda Hough herself.

  Though I had obviously counted on seeing her at some point during the day, had indeed prepared some gallantries for when we coincided during the afternoon’s pageantry, I was wholly unprepared for the sight of her at this moment. She was wearing green gingham, which became her marvelously, making her through its contrasting checks appear a Dryad dressed in different leaves.

  I was all self-consciousness as I clambered out of the cab. Edmund had suggested I might ask the driver to wait for me till I had finished my task; I felt at a loss as to what I should now do about this, Lucinda’s presence not having been bargained for. And I hated to look indecisive.

  “There are some programs and handbills which have been sent up here by mistake and need sorting out. That’s why I’ve come! At your father’s request!” I sounded almost apologetic as I delivered these sentences, for the principal expression on Lucinda’s face was bewilderment tinged with apprehension. I was aware too of my cabbie grinning sarcastically to himself, as though at my obvious ineptitude in the face of a very pretty girl so much my superior in composure of manner.

  “Oh, yes, Elsie did mention two large packets had arrived here; they’re standing in the kitchen now. Cyril and I arrived a bit earlier from London than we’d originally planned. He’s upstairs with my mother at this moment; she’s not feeling at all well. But I’m not doing anything much myself at the moment, so I could probably give you a hand with things.”

  No need whatever then for the cabbie to wait. Cyril would take both me and the sorted-out publications down to the Royal Gardens.

  “It’s strange yet to me, as a student of human nature, very interesting,” said Lucinda in a warm, confiding voice that, paradoxically, needless to say, rendered me self-exasperatingly shy, “of all her children Cyril is undoubtedly the one who irritates our mother the most, with whom she gets crossest and finds most fault. Yet when she’s upset or ill, he’s always the one she wants to see, and who proves the greatest comfort to her. Today, for example, she felt better almost as soon as he stepped into her room—especially as she wasn’t expecting to see him in the morning at all.”

  “I hope your mother will recover soon!” I said lamely, awkwardly.

  “Not much chance of that,” said Lucinda a touch breezily (sounding her father’s daughter). “‘Never be heavily pregnant when it’s eighty in the shade!’ is all one can say on the matter.”

  I had never heard any girl—or indeed any female of Lucinda Hough’s class and education—speak on this difficult, delicate, infinitely fascinating subject this way, which took the mind into so many mysterious yet vital, and everyday, regions. For once my embarrassment was such that I did not outwardly blush, rather felt—as I followed Lucinda into the comparative cool of Furzebank House with its thick, white-washed walls and flagged floors—suffused by an inward disquiet, a sense of being almost culpably ignorant of essentials of life, that took my conversational powers away—or all but.

  “It isn’t as if the Mater hasn’t been in this predicament before,” said Lucinda, compounding her own unexpected earthiness, and, with it, my own unease, “and it may well not be the last time either. No question of her being present at all the junketings this afternoon, though . . .”

  “I suppose if she felt better, she might . . .”

  “Do you know, even if she did, she wouldn’t want to come along. She hates people seeing her waddling about with all that extra baggage on her. She has her vanities, our mother, I’m afraid. She was the beauty of her neighborhood, and never forgets it.” There was, I noted, real affection in her laugh which I found endearing but also socially disconcerting, I was as unattuned to these domestic surroundings as some scarecrow might feel, brought in from a field and not sure what to do with his unwieldy broomstick limbs.

  But just then a high-pitched cannonade of yaps broke into my gaucherie, followed by an advance of cold, wet noses, and a voice to the back of me declaring: “This poor young man, so hot and bothered, who can he be? And why not think of his well-being, Lou, and offer him some of my lemonade. I have never made better.” The arrivals were, of course, the two Cairn terriers and Elsie Woodison who (a little to my chagrin) had forgotten who I was. But then, as she brought forth out of the cool of the larder a jug of a perfectly delicious drink of lemon, honey and mint, she recalled the circumstances of my one visit here even if I myself eluded her. “There was a boy from Norway on that occasion, was there not? Such beautiful hair, so wondrously gold. It reminded me of a beau I had who died. I should have so loved to have taken hold of his head, and caressed it.”

  Now I did well and truly blush, but Lucinda would surely put this down to a healthy dislike of hearing women cooing over the charms of another male. At any rate she said rather briskly: “Elsie, Martin Bridges has come here to work—on the Pater’s behalf—on the stuff in those two packets there. Why don’t the two of us go into the garden-room, and set to on them together. When Cyril comes down from the Mater’s room, he can join us, if he’s a mind to.”

  The garden-room was essentially a conservatory, with glass doors today open onto the garden, but, thank heavens, it was pleasantly most unlike those surroundings at the Majestic Hotel in which Herr Strømme, Hans, and I had, somewhat too formally, drunk hock-and-seltzer and bidden each other farewell. The place was untidy for a start, with children’s toys—a humming-top, two skipping-ropes, even a toy violin, all of them spelling peril to the careless foot—strewn between the basketwork chairs and occasional tables. Hibiscus, oleander, and St. John’s Wort abounded, and many tobacco-plants whose flowers provided the heady fragrance in which as it seem
ed, we proceeded to take our seats.

  “All these,” I remarked, looking around me, “must take some looking-after!” I found it difficult to envisage either of the older Houghs, for different reasons, doing this, but of course people of their status would have a fulltime gardener and the conservatory would be his responsibility.

  “I enjoy doing it though. I don’t think the Pater and Mater would have bothered with any of these beautiful blooms if it hadn’t been for me. And when I’m away—as I have been quite extendedly this past month”—she shot me an almost apprehensive glance here, as though to ascertain whether I’d been aware of this fact or not (I had, of course, noticed, with a dull kind of relief, that she had not been there with her ragged handful in the Gardens!)—“then there’s always Elsie naturally—but she doesn’t always remember what to do to which, if you understand me—and there’s also my young brother, George, who, believe it or not, has got quite a feeling for plants.”