Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  And then she found that she was so frail that just knowing that he was there tired her out, and she longed for him to go.

  At last he did.

  ‘About tomorrow,’ he said, still not entirely sure, it seemed, that she couldn’t understand. ‘If Maurice is back we’ll leave the field clear for him. If not, one or other of us will be here. We’ll have to play it a bit by ear.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Goodbye, Mum.’

  ‘How’s the baby?’ Mrs Critchley asked him as he set off.

  ‘Er . . . what? Ah. Doing well. Mother and child doing well,’ he said.

  ‘I’d booked a single room,’ she said, ‘so I have to say I’m very surprised, but you can’t say much when a little child is involved, can you, but I’ll tell you something. Next time I come to Buxton, I won’t be staying here.’

  ‘No. Absolutely. Quite,’ he said, and Kate could just imagine how quickly he fled.

  When he’d gone, she thought, You absolved me. Can I absolve you? Oh, Timothy, I do love you. I don’t want to die without knowing that you are innocent of murdering my fifth husband (or my fourth, or not a husband at all, but we can leave the linguistics till later).

  She wanted to go back and relive her night with Gwyn again, but she knew, in her heart, that it wouldn’t work. There was a limit to this seeing your life as a video. When she was eight, she’d eaten so much chocolate that she’d been sick and hadn’t fancied chocolate again for months. ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ her mother had said. It had been. Gwyn must wait, lest the emotion be dissipated by repetition.

  She must move on, on inexorably towards that far-off murder.

  But now the video image proved useful again. She would fast-forward through her last two years at school, in a Swansea made hateful to her by grief. Fast-forward through teacher-training college, where she began to rebuild her life. Fast-forward through the lonely hours in which she had studied the causes of the Great War, because it might help her if she could find out why he had died, and because she felt ashamed of herself and for the great mass of humanity for not caring about the causes while they were happening, because, if they had all cared enough, it might not have happened, and Gwyn might have lived to marry her, and then of course neither Nigel nor Timothy would ever have existed.

  She fast-forwarded through all that because it hadn’t helped, and it hadn’t helped because her conclusion had been that Gwyn need not have died. She came to the conclusion that a limited war in the Balkans had turned into Armageddon because there were so many people in so many countries who for so many reasons wanted it to be so. In Germany, in France, in Italy, in Russia, in Austria, in Hungary, and in Great Britain there were many people who believed in peace, but there were also many who believed in war, and the many who believed in war were usually in more powerful positions than the many who believed in peace, since greed, ambition and the lust for power were powerful motives for war, almost more powerful than the desire to teach a bloody lesson to the peoples one didn’t like. There had been an arms race in Europe for decades. Many people believed that arms races made the world safer. It had not proved to be so.

  Kate came across two telling passages of prose during her studies. In the Jungdeutschlandbund impressionable young Germans had read, ‘It will be more beautiful and wonderful to live for ever among the heroes on a war memorial in a church than to die an empty death in bed, nameless . . . let that be heaven for young Germany. Thus we wish to knock on God’s door.’ In Scouting For Boys, impressionable young Britons were urged to avoid the example of the Romans who lost their empire because they became ‘wishy-washy slackers without any go or patriotism in them’. Lord Baden-Powell exhorted members to ‘be prepared to die for your country . . . so that when the times come you may charge home with confidence, not caring whether you are to be killed or not’. Many men in many countries, Kate read, welcomed war as a possible solution to the economic and social evils in the big industrial cities.

  ‘War,’ said Kate to her assembled children many years later, ‘is old men sending young men to die.’ Shame on you, all you old men, that you didn’t let my young man live.

  So she believed that Gwyn had died in vain. There was no cure in that direction. The cure came, as it usually does, from the slow, slow drip of time, and now that her food was dripping into her, drip drip drip, and her life was dripping out of her, drip drip drip, there was no point in dwelling on the lost years, the long sleep of her soul. Fast-forward with our blessing, Kate dear, to the day, long ago, when you met, for the first time, the man who would father Nigel and Timothy, that absurd figure who ceased to be absurd in the only way he could, by becoming tragic.

  4 Arturo

  SHE’D THOUGHT HIM absurd at their first meeting, on the train taking her back to Penance. She was on her way from London, where she’d been visiting Myfanwy with her mother. Myfanwy was a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital. She’d found digs with a Mrs Lewis, in Willesden. Mrs Lewis was Welsh, so it was probably all right, but Bronwen was pleased to go to London just to make sure.

  He got on the train at Newbury, making a dramatic entry on a wave of autumnal air. He had a cape and a blackthorn stick. His hair was fair, and his eyes a piercing blue, but his nose was too small for the rest of his face.

  The train set off with a jolt, and he fell into his seat in an ungainly manner, which made her want to laugh.

  ‘Manners,’ he said, ‘are the curse of the middle classes.’

  ‘I’m sure you avoid them very nicely,’ she said.

  ‘Manners, or the middle classes?’

  ‘Both, from the look of you.’

  ‘You sound intelligent,’ he said. ‘I must say that surprises me.’

  She raised her fine eyebrows questioningly. Several men had already praised her eyebrows. Mr Wilkins, who lived next door to her lodgings, had called them evocative. He hadn’t told her of what they were evocative.

  ‘Why should I not be intelligent?’ she enquired.

  ‘Because you’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘You are very beautiful, you know.’

  ‘You put me in a difficult position there,’ she said. ‘If I say “Yes” you’ll think me conceited. If I say “No” you’ll think me stupid. If I say “Am I?” you’ll think me arch.’

  The suburbs of Newbury slipped past unnoticed, which was a blessing.

  ‘Why did you say what you said about manners?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you didn’t laugh at me when the train deposited me in my seat so rudely. You wanted to. I saw that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said gravely. ‘I plead guilty to having good manners.’

  He smiled, then, and she felt the first faint flicker of excitement.

  They were steaming through a river valley. Cows were munching in meadows green from the recent rains. Some of the trees were just beginning to turn. From time to time the view was obscured by the smoke from the engine.

  ‘I shall try to be intelligent, to justify your good opinion of me,’ she said. ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you?’

  ‘My disguise is penetrated,’ he exclaimed with delight. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. Arturo Rand, painter and poseur.’

  ‘Arturo! That’s an unusual name.’

  ‘My parents christened me Arthur. I wasn’t having that.’

  He produced a silver flask, unscrewed the top and poured amber liquid into it.

  ‘Whisky. The purest spirit in the world. I drink too much of it,’ he said complacently.

  He held the metal top out to her. She accepted it and drank cautiously. It set her throat on fire. She coughed, and took another sip.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know that anything so fiery could be so subtle. I didn’t know that anything so concentrated could taste so pure.’

  ‘That’s single malts for you,’ he said. He smiled again, and said, ‘Luckily, however much a person knows, there’s always more to teach them.’

  ‘That’s certainly lucky for me,’ she said.

  It was his
turn to raise his eyebrows, which were bushy.

  ‘I’m a teacher,’ she said. ‘My name is Kate Thomas. I’m Welsh.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘You have a Celtic lilt. Your voice is as soft as the western rain, and I daresay your lips are softer.’

  She looked at him in astonishment, and felt her heart racing.

  ‘Nobody speaks like that,’ she said.

  ‘I am not nobody.’

  He came across the compartment, and kissed her lips, very softly. Then he sat down again and made no comment. He looked out of the window at the beginnings of a town. She looked too, but the town was commonplace. Their eyes met. He looked very solemn, but she couldn’t tell whether he was really solemn or pretending to be solemn.

  The train stopped, and a fat woman got in, and she stank.

  Neither Kate nor Arturo felt able to continue their conversation in the presence of the fat woman. The train set off with a burst of chuffing and skidding, as if the engine was trying to be more magnificent than it was. An Arturo of an engine, Kate thought.

  She couldn’t believe that she’d allowed herself to be kissed by this absurd stranger. She thought about Gwyn and the pain still threatened to crack her heart open.

  The worst thing had been not being able to tell anyone. She’d longed to tell her father, but he’d have thought it wicked. She’d longed to tell Dilys – what was the point of having an identical twin if you couldn’t confide your innermost thoughts – but she hadn’t been able to. As for the others, Enid would have been jealous, Myfanwy contemptuous, Bernard inquisitive, Oliver thrilled, and they would all have been security risks. And her mother, how she had longed to open her grieving heart to her.

  She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up again the sweet smell of that Swansea night, rain, horse manure and hydrangeas, but it came now polluted by the sour stink of the fat woman.

  She opened her eyes again and found Arturo staring straight at her. He held his nose and raised his eyes and she began to giggle. She laughed until the tears ran down her face and suddenly they were tears of grief. Never to be able to touch him again ever, even once. Never to see his unnaturally grave but kindly face. Oh, Gwyn, I hardly ever saw you laugh. Already I have seen this idiot . . . no, not fair . . . this fool laugh more than I ever saw you laugh. She looked across at Arturo and realised that he was busying himself with looking at the gentle hills of Somerset. He wasn’t intruding on her private grief. She felt surprised by his sensitivity, and grateful for it. She longed to talk to him, and hoped that the smelly woman would get off at Taunton.

  She did. Lucky Kate. Unlucky Taunton. Arturo opened the window, grinned, and began to speak very excitedly and angrily in a wild foreign tongue. For just a moment she was alarmed, and then she understood. He was making sure that they had the compartment to themselves. She laughed in delight, and he laughed too.

  The train set off with a jerk. An awkward silence fell between them as they clattered through the rich Somerset country, the soil getting redder all the time.

  Kate sensed that Arturo wanted to say something sincere and unaffected, but wasn’t quite confident enough to do so. She decided to help him out.

  ‘It’s my turn to put you in a difficult position,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Are you a good artist?’

  ‘That doesn’t put me in a difficult position at all,’ he said. ‘Yes, I am a good artist.’ Suddenly he looked boyish, younger than his twenty-four years. ‘Whether I’m quite good enough remains to be seen.’

  ‘Is that why you adopt so many props?’ she asked.

  ‘Props?’

  ‘The whisky, the name, the stick, the cape, the moustache.’

  He fell silent, and she knew that she had gone too far. Oh Kate and your impulsive tongue, you have hit upon the one thing that is not permissible – the truth.

  She attempted to make amends.

  ‘Can I see some of your work?’ she asked. ‘I’d very much like to.’

  ‘All in good time, Kate.’

  She got out her sandwiches, and offered him one. They’d been made by her mother. They were neat and thin, with the crusts cut off. They were little square rebukes against the pleasures of the flesh. They were reminders of the poverty of the great mass of humanity. They were sermons in bread. She was ashamed of them.

  He produced his sandwiches, and she realised that he was ashamed of them. They were great doorsteps, rough-hewn, oozing their innards like dead animals.

  They ate both lots of sandwiches without comment. It was a time for avoiding controversy.

  After Exeter the train ran down the estuary of the Exe. They tide was out. Great flocks of migrating waders were feeding in the mud. Some, nearest to the tracks, flew glistening into the air at the approach of the roaring engine. The train ran along the coast, plunging in and out of short tunnels, steaming cheerfully past shingly bays and sandy bays and a sullen, swollen, pearl sea.

  ‘I love the sea,’ said Arturo. ‘I can’t paint except by the sea. I can’t breathe except by the sea. I’m a dry man. I need watering.’

  ‘I grew up with water too,’ said Kate. ‘I was offered several jobs. I thought Penance was a brave choice. The end of the earth. I think now it’s just another version of home.’

  ‘Tregarryn is like nobody’s home,’ he said. ‘Tregarryn is wild.’

  ‘Tregarryn?’

  ‘Where we live.’

  She should have asked him straight away, but didn’t dare. That little ‘we’ sat there between them, tiny word but vast obstacle. It sat between them in Teignmouth station and all the way up the lovely estuary of the Teign. As the train drew in to Newton Abbot, she plucked up courage and asked about it, blushing, to her horror, as she hadn’t blushed for years.

  ‘You said “we”,’ she said, and she knew that it was coming out in a horrible little voice, which she despised. ‘Who would that “we” be exactly?’

  He grinned. The beast had known what she was thinking, and said nothing. She couldn’t believe that she cared about him at all. But it was a nice grin, almost irresistible, and he had good teeth.

  ‘That “we” would be a little community of artists,’ he said. ‘Me, two other painters, the wife of one of the painters, and a sculptor. It’s not a large community yet, but we hope it will get bigger.’

  The train stopped, and he began to jabber away in a foreign tongue again, fending off the good people of Newton Abbot. She found herself laughing joyously at the success of his antics.

  The train set off again with another of the jolts that seemed to be the speciality of the driver.

  ‘And who is your particular partner?’ she asked, managing not to blush this time. ‘Or are you the one with the wife?’

  ‘No, I’m not the one with the wife,’ he said, ‘and I have no particular partner. I have been to bed with one of the painters, but she doesn’t love me and I don’t love her. And I had the sculptor once, but I didn’t enjoy it and neither did he, it was just an experiment.’

  Our Heroine is Struck Dumb at the Thought of Bohemia.

  He asked her about her family, and she talked about them with great affection and at excessive length, being Welsh.

  She asked him about his family, and he talked about them with great reserve and excessive brevity, being English.

  And then they were at Bodmin Road and he said, ‘I change here,’ and he gathered his things together, waved his blackthorn stick at her, tossed his cape over his shoulder imperiously, said, ‘Goodbye, Kate,’ and was gone. She wanted to open the window and cry, ‘But you haven’t given me your address. When will I see you?’ but of course she didn’t.

  Next morning, when she awoke in her lodgings, in beautiful Regent Square, she felt, as she felt every morning, the awful emptiness of her world. But it wasn’t of Gwyn that she was thinking. It was of Arturo Rand.

  Three weeks passed, and Kate didn’t hear from Arturo. The charming little house where she lodged, in an exquisite diminutive sq
uare of two-storey Georgian cottages, on the slope between the main street and the promenade, no longer seemed charming. The pastel colours of the houses, so pretty in the spring, seemed wishy-washy now. The autumn wind tore the leaves off the cherry trees, tossed the palms, battered the houses. She found it difficult to concentrate on teaching history to the daughters of people prosperous enough to pay for this doubtful privilege. She must see Arturo. If he would not go to her, then she must go to him.

  As the bus drew nearer to the lane that led from the main road to Tregarryn, Kate began to feel a knotted sickness in her stomach. This was ridiculous. It was no problem, surely, to wander down the lane and say, calmly, ‘Hello there. Your community intrigued me. I thought I’d pop down and take a look’?

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t look remotely calm as she walked down that lane. Her voice would come out little and breathless. She hated herself for her nervousness. It was pathetic. Arturo was a silly little man, five foot six, compensating for his feelings of inferiority with all his show of boldness. To compare him with Gwyn! To have abandoned you, my darling, for this. She persuaded herself into believing that it was noble of her not to get off the bus, but she still had a wild hope that he would be there, at the end of the lane, waiting for the bus to Bude, and she would say, ‘Well, this is a surprise. I’m just on my way to Bude, heard it’s nice, thought I’d have a look at it. We could have tea somewhere.’

  She hated Bude that day. She loathed its Arturoless streets. She felt angry with life, with the world, with the history of the human race. Unable to do much about that, she kicked a lamppost instead, and bruised a toe quite badly.

  On the bus back, she dreaded that he would be standing there with one of the artists, the sculptor with whom he had spent a disappointing night, or the painter whom he didn’t love, a haughty great woman in scarlet who would think her incorrigibly provincial. So her disappointment at finding nobody at all at the end of the lane was tinged with relief.