To the Ends of the Earth

by William Golding

  My turn came. I saw immediately Sir Henry Somerset on the quarterdeck and all aglitter in his full-dress uniform for a call on the governor. The reader may perhaps guess at the positive convulsion—no, I remember! My heart was all smashed as you might break an egg into a frying pan! What was my confused delight when I found myself gazing at the image of Miss Chumley! She stood by Lady Somerset on the quarterdeck, just astern of Sir Henry, who was busily issuing orders. The two ladies had their heads together, watching him, I think, and obediently silent as the ship turned in the channel. Now Sir Henry was examining the Residency with his telescope—we were eye to eye! He turned and said something laughingly to Miss Chumley. Now she was begging him for his telescope—a young officer was offering his own—he was holding it for her—she was making an adjustment—I took off my hat and waved—Miss Chumley abandoned the telescope and positively flung herself on Lady Helen’s breast! They embraced, Miss Chumley stood away—seemed confused, distraught almost—she ran quickly to the companionway and disappeared! Suddenly I was aware of the unkempt appearance we were accustomed to present in the early morning—better than the positively farouche appearance of the generality of men in Sydney Cove but the difference was little—and hurried away to put myself straight. By the time I was shaved and dressed as I ought, Alcyone was tied up alongside. I raised my hat to Sir Henry, who was coming up the Residency steps as I went down them, but I believe he never noticed me. He was followed by a midshipman who carried a large portefeuille. Sir Henry was red in the face and puffing.

  By the time I reached the quay, Alcyone had established her berth. Her after and forrard gangways were down, with sentries at them and quartermasters. Already she was taking in water and supplies. Despite the bustle on the quay, Lady Somerset was standing on it in a space which seemed sacred to her. Miss Chumley was not to be seen. As I approached Lady Somerset I took off my hat, but she instantly begged me to resume it. After India it was quite disconcerting to see a gentleman without his hat. I stammered a compliment on her appearance but she would have none of it.

  “Mr Talbot, you have no idea the straits to which poor females are reduced in a frigate! But at least we did not suffer as this place appears to from flies—faugh!”

  “One does not become accustomed to them. Lady Somerset, I beg you—”

  “Now you are going to ask to see poor Marion.”

  “Poor Marion? Poor Marion?”

  “She cannot abide the sea nor become habituated to it. She will even prefer the flies, I don’t doubt.”

  “Lady Somerset—if you only knew how I have longed for this meeting!”

  “I am a romantic at heart, Mr Talbot, but the care of a young female has gone some way towards curing me of what I begin to think an aberration. Your letters went far beyond what I proposed for you when I consented to a correspondence. Are you trifling, sir?”

  “Lady Somerset!”

  “Well, I suppose not. But a—what are you? Fourth secretary? And your godfather is dead, we hear.”

  “I fear so. Oh, it was so unfortunate!”

  “For you, perhaps. Him too, we must believe. Though as far as the country is concerned—”

  “She is coming!”

  Indeed she was! Miss Chumley, in the time since we had been eye to eye through telescopes, had changed entirely! Where was the cloak of dull green which had hung from her shoulders? This radiant vision was dressed in white with a scarf of Indian gauze lying across her shoulders, then hanging from both arms. Her gloves buttoned to the elbows. A wide-brimmed straw hat was tied on lightly by another scarf which nestled under her chin. Her face glowed in the shelter of a rosy sunshade. Her other hand held a fan with which she attempted, not with entire success, to keep the flies away. I swept off my hat.

  “Mr Talbot—your hair!”

  “An accident, ma’am, a trifle.”

  “Marion dear, I believe we should invite Mr Talbot to come aboard, but tomorrow perhaps—”

  “Oh, Helen! I beg of you! The land is unsteady but wonderful! It appears of such an extent, with trees and houses and things! Oh, Helen, they are English houses!”

  “Well. You may stay for a while. I shall send Janet to you. Do not leave the quay. Mr Talbot will look after you.”

  “Indeed, ma’am, I ask nothing more than to be allowed—”

  “And do not allow any of the natives, the aboriginals I believe they are called, to approach her.”

  “Of course not, ma’am.”

  “Nor convicts, naturally.”

  “No, ma’am. May I advise? We do not use that word here. They are ‘government men’.”

  Lady Helen curtsied minutely, turned and went on board again. Miss Chumley and I continued to look at each other. She was smiling delightedly and shaking her head as if in disbelief and then fanning away flies—I suppose I was grinning like an idiot or laughing like one—behaving, in fact, very little as a secretary from the Residency should behave within ten yards of a surely amused audience! We spoke but as people in trances. By the magical properties of Mind so little understood, she and I could remember later what neither of us heard consciously at the time.

  “Mr Talbot, you are quite, quite bronzed!”

  “I apologize for it, Miss Chumley. It is not permanent.”

  “I fear I am weather-beaten.”

  “Oh, ma’am—an English rose! You have been in the rains, a monsoon or something.”

  “We have been at sea.”

  “Not all the time!”

  “I did not know there was so much, Mr Talbot, that is the fact of the matter. One sees maps and globes but it is different!”

  “It is indeed different!”

  “Most of it you know, sir, is quite unnecessary.”

  “Quite, quite unnecessary! Away with it! There shall be no more sea! Let us have a modest strip between one country and another—a kind of canal—”

  “The occasional ornamental lake in a prospect—”

  “A fountain or two—”

  “Oh yes! Fountains are of the utmost importance!”

  It was at this moment, I believe, that we both became aware of the absurdity of our words and laughed, or rather giggled, at them. I began to reach out with my arms in a quite spontaneous gesture but I saw valuable Janet appear at the after gangway and dropped them again.

  “Miss Chumley, we are both much put upon by the ocean—but surely you reached India?”

  “Oh, yes. We were in Madras for a while and then Calcutta. But my cousin—after the death of poor Rosie Aylmer—all that talent, that goodness, her beauty—so tragic and so frightening, for she was little older than I am! My cousin thought me too green to last out the epidemic. Lady Somerset brought me away again and what must Sir Henry do but fall in with the admiral?”

  “Kind fate has brought us together. I have maligned the universe!”

  Miss Chumley laughed deliciously and—if I may so express it—more collectedly.

  “The universe? Fate? Say rather that the Corsican Tyrant contrived our meeting! Well, it is no wonder, for many people and particularly the French have found it difficult to distinguish between him and Fate.”

  “Napoleon!”

  “The wretched man has escaped from Elba and landed in France. We are at war again. The news came overland to the admiral in the Red Sea, so that when he met us off Cape Comorin he was able to order us here with utmost despatch and what is more, I suppose, we shall leave with the same desperate haste.”

  “I cannot endure it! You put me at once in the seventh heaven and in anguish!”

  “Poor Mr Talbot! I believe any young person would do whatever—but I should not say such things!”

  “Miss Chumley—oh, Miss Chumley—Miss Chumley!”

  I became aware that Miss Oates, Lady Somerset’s valuable Janet, was standing behind Miss Chumley. I took my hat off and bowed to her, she curtsied and we returned to our conversation but in less passionate tones.

  “As you know, Mr Talbot, Lady Somerset has kindly
taken me in charge.”

  “A precious responsibility that any—”

  “There is a kind of agreement between us that I may not answer the question—that is—”

  “Oh, Miss Chumley!”

  “Young persons are generally thought to be too ignorant to be allowed to dispose of themselves in a proper direction and must have an elder to do it for them.”

  “I had thought her a devotee of Nature.”

  Miss Chumley fanned flies away from her face. Then, in a gesture which moved me inexpressibly, she leaned forward and fanned the flies away from mine.

  “One should be a Shakespearean heroine, Mr Talbot, and take care always to be at Act Five. I mean the comedies, of course.”

  “Oh indeed! What have we to do with crookbacks and angry old men with wicked daughters?”

  “Nothing, of course. But what was in my mind was that straightforward offering of the hand as if a young person were in fact a young man in disguise—”

  “Miss Chumley! Like Juliet you would, I swear, teach the torches to burn bright! The air, the sun however bronzing—colour—forgive these tears—and flies—they are flies—tears, I mean, of joy!”

  Impulsively I thrust out my hand. She allowed the fan to fall the length of its string from her wrist and laid her hand in mine, laughing.

  “Dear Mr Talbot! You have quite swept me off my feet!”

  At length—and how unwillingly!—I released her hand.

  “Forgive me, Miss Chumley. I fear my nature is too ardent.”

  She flicked the fan back into her hand and busily cleared the flies from before me. In the space cleared momentarily her glowing face came near. Lady Somerset appeared beyond it. Miss Oates was nowhere to be seen. Miss Chumley turned quickly.

  “Helen! Where is Janet?”

  “She fled below when the sailors began to laugh. You should resume your hat, Mr Talbot.”

  “Sailors, ma’am? Laughing?”

  “That went near to being public, Marion!”

  “I am sorry for it, Helen. But as I told Mr Talbot he quite swept me off my feet, and what is a young person—”

  “You should go below now.”

  “But, Helen—”

  “Lady Somerset—”

  “You shall see him tomorrow if we are still here—but on a lungeing rein, mind!”

  She watched the girl out of sight.

  “You have my sympathy, Mr Talbot, but nothing more. Your godfather’s death will delay your rise to fame and fortune, I imagine.”

  “I have an allowance sufficient for a young man—too little I agree for any larger establishment. My father—”

  “A junior secretary cannot marry even if he has private means. Until I came on deck—Mr Talbot, it was too familiar! Well. You are wholly eligible except in the article of fortune. I am vexed, Mr Talbot, caught between my care of a young female—”

  “She is the most beautiful lady in the world!”

  “A proper sentiment on your part, sir. She is also all wit, which will outlast beauty and is worth a lot more, though gentlemen can never be brought to think so. The remainder of her character, Mr Talbot, is compounded of determination and—until this episode I would have said—of common sense!”

  “She was—we were—made for each other.”

  “In Calcutta she was besieged.”

  “I can believe it. Oh, God!”

  “I am a romantic after all, it seems. You may see her tomorrow morning.”

  “I beg of you, ma’am, allow me to take her driving! Between now and sunset—”

  “Tomorrow. Today we go to engage rooms in an hotel if there be one proper for us. Indeed the case is so desperate I believe we must make use of one even if it is not quite proper.”

  “Lady Somerset, I cannot believe you!”

  Lady Somerset fixed me with a bold eye and spoke swooningly in her deep contralto.

  “Since you expect to be a married man, Mr Talbot, you had better know the worst. Baths, sir, hot baths. It will be news to you, perhaps, but ladies require them just as much as you do!”

  With that and the indication of a curtsey she returned to the ship. I hurried off and wrote a note requesting the privilege of driving Miss Chumley on the morrow. Back came an answer within an hour. Lady Somerset presented her compliments to Mr Talbot and consented to his driving Miss Chumley and Miss Oates on the morrow for an hour or two in the morning. Mr Talbot would be expected on the new quay by ten o’clock.

  Lady Somerset may have expected a barouche. It was, however—and I was lucky to find it—an Indian buggy, with a rumble seat facing aft for Miss Oates and two seats facing forrard. This was brutal for poor Miss Oates—but love demands sacrifices from us all! I and the buggy were at the ship by a quarter to ten in the morning. It was already so hot that walking the horse was not merely unnecessary but inadvisable. I became once more an object of curiosity and—I think—amusement to the crew of the vessel.

  Lady Somerset appeared first. She fanned disgustedly at the cloud of flies which surrounded both me and the horse.

  “Good morning, Mr Talbot. That seat is dedicated to Miss Oates, I suppose. Your horse is small. At least he will not run away with you.”

  “The difficulty, ma’am, is to get him to move.”

  Lady Somerset signified her agreement. I had almost said “nodded”; but with her, the movement was as little of a nod as the bowed assent of Almighty Zeus.

  “She will be here directly. You have no idea the number of times—ah! Here they come.”

  I cannot remember what I said or she said or they said—

  (23)

  And then?

  I forgot so much these days, that is the trouble. Not that it matters, of course. None of these volumes is able to be published until we are all forgotten. In any case, journals tell so little. I leafed through these and found myself able to do no more than sample here and there. I shall not reread them. Letters too. Only the other day one reached me at the Foreign Office from—of all people—Lieutenant, or I should say Mr Oldmeadow. He has a grandson, of course, and wants this and that. He himself turned in his commission long ago and took up a land grant, then bought more. He is now lord, he swears, of a bigger estate than Cornwall! That, and the lanky boy with his strange way of speaking, had me dwelling on the glimpses I had of Australia. It was mostly a memory of the birds, green swarms of them, or white ones with a yellow crest. I suppose it all happened, the voyage too. Only the other day the Prime Minister himself said, “Talbot, you’re becoming a deuced bore about that voyage of yours.”

  Oldmeadow’s letter did afford me a glimpse of my friends the Prettimans. They came towards the interior by way of his estate. He gave a vivid picture of them—she leading in her trowsers astride a mettlesome steed, he just astern of her but riding side-saddle with his legs on the offside as he had foreseen! A handful of immigrants and freed government men and one or two savages followed them.

  Oldmeadow said—now what the devil did he say? Of course! He tried to persuade them that to go on was sheer insanity. But they rode off into the back of beyond, no matter what he could say to them. As he said in his letter, not a hair nor hide of any of them has been seen since. I hope they reached some sort of place. And then again, there was the letter years before that, from what’s his name, Old Mr Brocklebank. He claimed to be prospering in his paint shop. Zenobia (his elder “daughter”!) had died only a month or two after leaving the ship. She had a message for me, he said. It was something like “Tell Edmund I am crossing the bridge.” Devil take it, there were no bridges anywhere near Sydney in those days and our old tub wasn’t a steamship!

  But of course, I remember now. Miss Chumley appeared, followed by Miss Oates. I handed her up, Miss Oates fairly scuttled into the rumble seat. I do not know how she managed it. By the time I looked round she was seated and staring into the air, both hands gripping the handles on either side of her.

  “Are you settled, Miss Oates? Miss Chumley?”

  “I am
very comfortable, sir. May I suggest?”

  “Anything!”

  “May we move away from the water? You know my aversion for the sea.”

  “Of course, ma’am. We shall drive inland.”

  We were off. I cannot say the drive was exhilarating as far as skill in driving is concerned. The small and sullen horse was perhaps more accustomed to funerals than to parties of pleasure. I did encourage him into a trot once, but it was not the “fast trot” and he soon gave up, clearly feeling that three passengers were more than enough. I thought so too, though for a different reason. Granted, however, that you are forced to be a threesome, Miss Oates was an ideal chaperon. I asked her if she was comfortable, Miss Chumley invited her to admire the extraordinary whiteness of a tree trunk and after that she might not have been with us at all!

  “I divine that you are taking me to view a prospect, Mr Talbot. If I dare suggest—”