What could I answer, when he said what I knew in my own heart to be true? Had I not stayed for the faces, for Sam’s principally, and Tom’s, Edward’s, Mrs Simmons’? Had that not become my own creed? Yet I felt Sam was right. ‘Without considerations’, he had argued. My gorge rose as much at my own doubts as Edward’s naming of them. Then I recalled Sam’s speech in Perkins. A bit of his father’s chicanery, Sam said, that story of elephants and eagles. Sam was right, but his father’s vision was less kind. Did not Anne have big hands and a face upon a face? Her large bones appalled him, and, in her need, he shrank from her blood and inarticulate clamour. These were not idle pictures. Edward had raised the flag of his imagination. Though he won my sympathy and my belief, as a man of such niceties, I could not let him win my heart. So I answered him.
‘I once thought as you. As a story, I said to myself, to say nothing of the science, I should have chosen another scene, a different subject for my brush. Speaking as an artist, I mean, and I believe Sam wishes to be judged, at least in part, according to their fashion. The stars, their extent and nature, should have drawn me first. Barring that, perhaps creation itself, the processes of human life. As a doctor, I have seen such mysteries first hand. There is much to be delved into. I often find that narrow corners offer wider prospects of discovery than open spaces.
‘But there is a something in Sam I cannot quite shake from me. You, sir, seem blessed with a bedevilled imagination. My own thoughts are often tempted by freaks and frolics. To us, Sam’s improbable images seem cold, his conceptions smooth and lifeless. And yet … there is great consolation in numbers. Do you know, sir, I have often consoled myself with the drudgery of Sam’s theories, their attention to calculation and detail. Perhaps because the charlatan binds half-truths lightly and would not cement them with such hard mortar and impractical falsehoods (as they once seemed to me). As I came to love him, sir, I wished him an honest man and misguided, rather than a cheat. Even though the latter is a happier trade. And yet …
‘The more I think on these hollowed spheres beneath us, revolving endlessly in measured patterns; the brief coincidence of their faults, the eclipse of vacuii. Coincidences, I say, though Sam believes he will learn their seasons in time. These eclipses in their course breed storms, stir volcanoes, toss seas, ruin crops, burn cities, swallow ships, that in turn desolate nations and leave widowed wives and orphaned children, that in turn … you follow me, sir? Sam once said to me that precision is only one kind of abundance. He loves it for that reason. And his is an abundant world, more intricate than our fevered imaginations of gargoyles and ghasts; richer, too. Those shining revolutions … bright overlapping metals … bursting and colluding suns. The tale of disasters to be spun from such thread, of Pompeii and Sodom. You and I are drawn to deviations, freaks, things that suffer no explanation. But your son has made a muse of inevitability. It calls to him as beautifully as chance to us. It is a being full of light and colour in his eyes. Is not his the nobler faith?’
There was a clatter at the door and the thud of a dropped pack. Sam walked in. ‘I have come a day early, as you see. I missed my Phidy,’ he said, ‘and knew we should return for Tom’s wedding soon. And now your news?’ He greeted us both easily, enquired after our healths. He was too much at ease for anything but happiness to sit smiling at his heart. He had overheard me, of that I am sure. I was moved to see how calm and content even my poor fervent admiration could make him. He was, though I had not suspected it before, a creature of loves. That night, Sam and I resumed all our old habits of intimacy.
In a week, we left for Pactaw and Tom’s wedding. I said farewell to Edward at the door. He was ever gracious, especially in farewell. We two were closer kinned in nature than Sam and I. But I walked with his son down the garden path, linked arm in arm.
I slept through most of the journey to Pactaw and awoke with my thick head in the crook of Sam’s elbow. Eyes shut, I breathed the odour of his side, rich and warm as baking bread in the sunshine trapped by the carriage window. His eyes were open, but he did not mark me until I sat up and said, ‘A summer is not so long, after all.’
‘No‚’ he answered absent-mindedly, ‘but coming home always steals time.’
I began to note the first signs of Pactaw. The road dipped into the valley and ran beside the river for a space. The Apple Cart flew by us on the left, and I thought of that colder day when all our prospects lay clean as snow before us. Now the land was brown and green and cut across by raws of fallen trees (tipped over by the great storm, I suppose), whose roots reached from the dry earth like buried hands. Then we passed along the Dewdrop in a slower canter (old Barnaby sunned himself upon the stoop), and the town surrounded me, with a homecoming whose joy caught me by surprise. I had come a year before, a stranger to the place. Now I rode to Pactaw for a wedding and farewells.
My familiar eye tallied every street and house and tree. The market square, half-empty in declining day, a clutter of trampled greens underfoot. I looked long at the Boathouse across the water, gleaming under a lick of fresh paint; the fresh-built jetty below thronged by pleasure-boats, a thick fire smoking from the chimney. Even the crickets scraped a native air on their dry legs. The eucalyptus trees, with flowers in their hair, filled my breath. I know the song the sirens sing, and it is this: rest a while, you have been here before. A while, I thought, but I cannot stay.
My feet led me of their own sweet will back down Main Street towards the Dewdrop Inn. ‘Shall we sup here?’ I cried to Sam, lagging behind.
‘If you please. Tom will take a glass of wine with us later, but he dines with his father-to-be. I would never believe it‚’ he said, coming up, ‘I am out of breath. Grief has made me fat.’
A small boy, barefoot and sprouted from his leggings, stood at the post by the door on whose step old Barnaby sat. ‘Your kind never do have horses‚’ the lad remarked sarcastically, spinning a coin in the air.
‘What kind is that?’ I asked him.
‘Layabouts‚’ he answered, which pleased us somehow, and I gave him a penny for luck. ‘It won’t buy you that‚’ he said. ‘But it might buy me something.’
‘Hush now‚’ Barnaby cried, in his slaw rasp. ‘My niece’s boy, a vicious creature. Ah, ‘tis the Boxer himself‚’ he said, squinting against the last of the sun and addressing Sam. ‘You should have gone far, sir, in that noble science, I believe.’
‘Too late‚’ came the answer. ‘For I have got fat and scant of breath. And wish to grow fatter.’
Sam and I ate our two great chops in hunger and silence. He was as common as a brother to me now, and time lay so light in our hands we could bear it between us without a word said. Sam was unhappy and quiet. I was only quiet. Then Tom came and spurred our spirits to a quicker gait. We sat for hours over glasses of ale at the Dewdrop, talking comfortably. Though afflicted by such separate and lonely considerations, we had each hoarded sufficient mirth to pay for one happy evening together.
‘O Tom, what shall I do without you?’ Sam said at last. ‘At least I have my widow to turn to.’ I had never heard him call Mrs Simmons by that name, as if she were a badge of middle age. Then the church-bell rang its ten slow steps into the night. Sam rose and said, ‘They call me to her, gentlemen. Bless you, Tom. Kitty is a sweet lass. But there is much to be said – for widows with heavy purses. Remember the proverb – “For blood grows old and cold, and so (thank God) does gold.” The round is yours Phidy. Good night.’
‘He jests only from a heavy heart‚’ Tom said, after Sam had gone.
‘It is something else, Tom. He grows gentle slowly. Another glass with you?’
‘No, thank you, Phidy.’ He rose to leave. Even now I wished to linger beside them, when they turned to their own purposes. ‘You sleep with me tonight, I believe?’ Tom said. ‘I have taken a room on Seymour Lane.’ Then he added, as if someone had just brought the news, ‘I am to be wed tomorrow.’
We lingered at the lamp-post outside his gate. Tom, whose body had gro
wn more eloquent than his tongue, twined himself about it and about, supple with sadness. ‘I suppose, Phidy‚’ he began, then paused. I had known him for a year, and still I sought some peephole to his thoughts – a sweet creature, easy in joy and easily upset, occasionally peevish, tireless and faithful in love. He would be married on the morrow, and I hoped perhaps to gossip my way into his affections. ‘I suppose’, he resumed at last, ‘you won him after all. In the end – you Understand me.’ Even then he could not turn the talk to his own life, or would not, though I desired with all my heart for some speech touching the matter nearest Tom’s own. ‘You won him after all.’ He had a guilty air, too, as if he confessed a secret. ‘Too late, however, I suppose. It is all the same now‚’ he said.
What is? I thought. But he had gone to the door and slipped inside with a finger on his lips. We tiptoed to the second floor and undressed in silence. ‘Kitty‚’ he called me, joking, as we lay side by side in bed. ‘Tomorrow Kitty will lie there.’ He soon fell asleep, more easily than I.
The wedding day dawned in a brisk hurry of clouds. We ran into the church with our heads bent under a quick shower of rain. The church filled with people and noise and the smell of wet clothes. (Pactaw had gone to great lengths to prove its finery. I observed with a secret smile the red necks of unfamiliar collars; the pinched bosoms of outgrown frocks; not to mention sly snifflings snuffed in the damask folds of best shawls.) Tom’s father, a vicar himself, presided with efficient cheerfulness.
‘As this is not my church, I don’t mind SHOUTING to keep order. Jeb, keep young Tommy tight on your LAP, even if he is dirty and bites. I won’t have him throwing hats at the choir. The good Reverend Docket has been kind enough to let me borrow his church for an afternoon, for he only lets it from the Lord, and he may, I hope, sub-lease it as he wishes. We are ail cousins in the eyes of God (no nearer, praise Him). As most of you know, I have come to seal my son and Kitty Thomas in eternal happiness. If the rest of you would be quiet for a moment, the choir might have their sing, and we can translate the pair into holy bliss as soon as possible.’
The makeshift scenery of marriage was set in place, the props and actors of the stage. The citizens gathered below, the heroine stood in splendid array, and the music played. There was much gold and fine cloth and a great sweat. The two lovers entered stage left and marched to the head of the platform. They gave their lines beautifully, too clear and loud for life, and even Kitty’s whispers echoed in the silent hall. There was a shout and tears and the play was aver and the crowd fled in great spirits and noise and the scenery was taken down and the actors left wondering which life to turn to. But then the party began and they were led triumphant from the theatre, in a carriage with white horses down the street through a river of men. Someone had brought a trumpet on the way and tooted hymns above the cantering hoofs. Even the fathers sang. All the way to the house of Pa Thomas, the prosperous baker, who had put a tent in his garden and more cake and food than the Pied Piper’s crew could eat at once.
By the afternoon a great wind had swept the clouds from the sky. We were shouting like sailors across the tables. Pa Thomas sent forth his servants and hushed us with bottles of champagne. At last we each sparkled with a glass and looked up, waiting. Sam rose to a speech, with a voice to carry across the busy winds.
‘I feel indeed as if I have given – my own bride away to marriage,’ he called. ‘Tom has been my dearest friend – my most faithful comrade for many years. He has worked tirelessly for our cause. And if at times I have been mean in thanks – it is only because I had not the heart to bear our disappointments – and I knew he could. I cannot imagine a truer friend. I know that some among you – all good and sensible people – have wondered at his dedication. He wastes himself – you thought – on a blind faith. I know the gossip. I may be mad – but I am not deaf.’ A few people laughed, and I knew then I could never hide from him.
‘Blind faith. What a strange phrase that is. Tom is blind and deaf to doubt – for he does not trust his eyes or head – but he will grapple you to his heart with hoops of steel. Which is the wiser, I ask: an intimate hand or a spectacled curiosity? Tom does not look to either side of him. So he neither swerves from his purpose – nor turns from his love. A skill, I think, that will serve a wife as well as a scientist. Kitty, I could not wish you a truer husband. The gossip may cease now, I believe. Tom has joined the race of respectable men.’ The laughter was now general. ‘If I were a young lady, Kitty … I should have fought you tooth and nail for his hand. But I yield to a fairer rival – and wish you both the joy that is Tom’s peculiar gift.’ Kitty went to him and kissed him on the cheek, and everyone else began to eat.
There was a great crowd, of penguins and peacocks, the men in black and white and the women bright as feathers in their summer dresses. Nobody looked at ease. The peacocks talked among themselves, with a penguin between them. Mothers and grandmothers stood with children flapping unobserved around their knees. The wind puffed to burst its cheeks. It blew the dresses right round, wrapping the ladies like fish in newspaper. ‘Come under the marquee‚’ cried Pa Thomas, ‘come under the marquee!’ So we huddled like birds on a sandbank, and there were great cries of ‘Pardon me, madam’ and ‘Is that your foot?’ I wondered if the gulls had similar calls. But the tent served little purpose, except to bring us to the tables of cake and champagne.
Then there was a crack and a flap and a thud and the canvas sky came falling about our ears. The ladies screamed as if lightning had struck. Two old men were rolled like a sausage in the fallen pavilion. A pole knocked me on the head and a table tipped over in the scurry. We all cheered, drunk and laughing, but did not venture beneath it when the tent was propped up. Squashed cake lay like leftover snow in the grass. ‘Heaven has fallen,’ said Jeb gallantly to a pretty girl, ‘and risen again.’
*
I have not told the real issue of Tom’s wedding, nor described its most important guest. Joy, like sorrow, comes in brotherhood. And the day that sealed the course of Tom’s life ushered a new season in Sam’s, a season that brought with it such fruition as we had all desired until perhaps it came. Sam was dressed in his finest sorrow for the marriage, and spoke with such kind love as I had never known in him. He had the air of a summer day whose heavy atmosphere has been lightened by a swift storm, and all is still and the breath sweet though cold for an hour or two perhaps, until the old heaviness comes dawn again.
The bells rang out six o’clock and our spirits began to flag, happily, like the light-filled sails that bring a boat to shore with the land-breeze at sunset. We grew quiet and watchful. The wind blew a flap of the tent against a table and its bottle of champagne, but ever failed to knock it down. The children sat in a heap on Tom’s mother. Even Kitty failed to keep her sharp tongue, grew silent with her arm around Tom and did not attend to the slight talk around her, nor to her husband indeed. Her eyes twitched when she saw a stranger at the garden gate, blown open by the wind and clanging to and fro against its post. My eyes followed hers, for I had made her my study of the afternoon. A gentleman pushed the gate open and closed it carefully behind him, though the latch refused to stick and he abandoned it at last. He waved at all of us, though we did not know him, and came towards us.
He was a tall, pink man with moist hands, as I found from his soft handshake. But he had not a nervous temperament, and stood surprisingly at ease in our small company, for an intruder. He could not have been much older than thirty.
‘I am sorry to disturb you on such an occasion, but I have come lately from Baltimore where your father directed me, Dr Syme – a most hospitable man. I seem to have arrived at the feast.’ He smiled. He gave the impression of having a great deal of time, though he understood that others around him were less blessed than he in that particular. ‘Perhaps you don’t remember me, Tom. My name’s Ezekiel. Harcourt.’
Tom was instantly attentive, as always, to someone who could do Sam a bit of good. ‘Of course, sir, I recall: that foul d
ay at Perkins and the miserable Mr Cooling. What business could have brought you there I can’t imagine, but it was kind of you to attend, though Sam was sickening a little that day …’ Tom protested too much. His offices were over, and I watched for a sharp look from Kitty, but none came.
‘Indeed it was my pleasure, Tom, a welcome respite from the business that brought me there. Sir‚’ he turned to Sam, ‘I was interest ed, a great word with me. Rarely do I have the occasion to apply it. That other business came to no purpose, as it happens, so I would be glad if something good could be saved from a bad day … How much money, Sam, would you require for a magazine?’
‘I would not have this – come upon your wedding for the world, Tom‚’ Sam answered. ‘It is no longer your affair.’
‘Kitty can spare me a minute? My sweet love, you do not mind?’
‘A minute or two I can spare, Tom. I leave you gentlemen to your … business.’ She walked through the happy wreckage of the wedding-party, towards a wilful boy, hanging and banging on the gate.
‘I am sorry, gentlemen. I did not guess I had dug up a bone of contention.’
‘There is no contention, sir. Only Tom has just accepted a post at the Southern Courier, and my German friend is called home. Alas, I am not their only duty. But they were my props and I wonder whether I can walk without them.’ There was a silence, broken only by the flaps and freaks of the marquee, loud as whips.
The Syme Papers Page 57
