In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  In fact, they were supposed to be staying at Plas David, paying Mary ten guineas a week each while Boscawen-Jones completed some of the verse ‘in this beautiful country house only one mile from the little bay of St David where home cooking and unhotel-like comfort, combined with every care for your well-being in every way, are the marks of our unique hospitality’—he remembered the glowing wording of Mother’s brochure the year Mary had gone into the guest-house business.

  At another time the prospect of two such wild guests would have excited John; but now, with the results of the exam looming ahead, and the knowledge of his impaired prestige with the family, he felt only awkward and detached, unanxious to try and impress either of them with any facet of his character, too steeply involved in his own recurrent despair to want to ‘show off’ even by silence.

  He walked through the raftered dining-room into the long drawing-room which jutted backward from the front of the cottage to the Dog Field and the vegetable garden. The left-hand windows were open and boxes of sunlight streamed across the room on to the tired covers of the armchairs on to the baby ‘Grand’ and the little Dresden mirror with its crisp confection of flowers and cupids on the opposite wall.

  Like the wallflower glowing in his lapel these things filled him with a pain that was at once dear and almost intolerable, reminding him of the reality of a happiness which he wished had never existed so that he might not now know the full extent of his present misery. Under the impact of it, he realised that if in fact he did make the swim to the Race in a few weeks’ time, then these inanimate things would be the real though indirect instruments of his death: a wallflower, a Dresden mirror, and the rosewood curve of a Bechstein piano. Such things should never have been allowed the constancy denied such people as himself; but should themselves have changed as he had changed, slowly and completely, since first he had seen them as a child in the grey and silver drawing-room of the Beddington vicarage fifteen years ago.

  Inclining his head to sniff once more the scent of the wallflower, a line of poetry he had once read somewhere spoke clearly in his mind:

  “And now that my disease is made most manifest to me,

  I fear the throwers by the wall—

  Remembering dead flowers and fires.”

  From the piazza outside the windows he heard the rattle of a tea-cup and the clipped syllables of Mary’s words:

  “Well if they’re all going over to Porth Newydd surely they won’t want dinner at the Plas first? In any case it’s very unfair on the staff, Michael taking them off into Benllwch like that the moment they arrived. I didn’t even know that they had arrived until I came over and saw their cases in the cloakroom. What did they want in Benllwch, Mother?”

  “Yes, it was very naughty of them.” Mother was indulgently full of China tea. “But I couldn’t stop them; apparently this awful friend of his had run out of typing paper—”

  “Surely you didn’t believe that! They’ve gone to the Rhosybol Arms and they’ll come back demanding dinner at the last minute just as we’re starting on the washing-up of all the other guests.”

  “I told them distinctly that they’d have to be back by seven if they wanted a meal before they went over to Porth Newydd. Horab wants John and Michael to have dinner with them and that will save Nanny.”

  “No, I can’t do with any extras, there’s not enough tongue. I’m budgeting very carefully this quarter, Mother. If we had a licence I could afford to be lavish with the food, but as it is—”

  “Don’t be short-sighted dear, you can charge an extra guinea each for a dinner like yours, and Michael and John can make up with the ends; serve it up in the kitchen and see that Betty gives the right helpings to the right people.”

  “But I don’t want them over there. I have no say in the last-minute guests as a rule, but as far as my own brothers are concerned—you really don’t understand the extra work it entails. I want to have everything finished before George arrives at eight-thirty—we’re going to go down to the Bay and put out the lobster pots at low tide.”

  “Well! You’ll have to look slippy,” Father’s voice broke in plaintively. “Low tide’s at eight-fifteen tonight.”

  “Shut up Teddy!” said Mother.

  “I was only telling her that if she wants to get the pots out this evening she’ll have to catch the ebb—What about bait? They like a bit of rotten herring; Have you ordered bait from—”

  “Oh be quiet!” said Mary. “Why must you always interrupt—What was I saying?” She paused. “John’s not invited over to Lady Geraldine’s is he?”

  “Yes, she particularly wants all the men she can lay her hands on, six of The Wycombe Abbey girls arrived for the summer holidays last week-end and she’s at her wit’s end to entertain them, the poor darling.”

  “But you’re not letting them go, surely?”

  “Yes dear! Why did you want him for anything?”

  “No; but I don’t think he ought to go. He spends far too much time loafing about over there in the holidays and in any case I want him to help with the washing-up.”

  “I think it might be good for him, he’s been looking very pale lately—”

  “Hhph!” Mary’s ejaculation came through the window like a rifle crack. “You know why that is.”

  “The lad’s very exercised over his exam results,” said Father. “As long as they’re not too late getting back—I wanted John to serve at the nine o’clock and I have an awful job to get him out of his bed in the morning.”

  “Of course you do!” Mary picked up speed and enthusiasm. “He’s been adolescent far too long, and going over to Lady Gerry’s with the place full of young girls will only make him worse. I think we should wait and see whether he’s passed this Exam before we allow him to run all round the Island with Michael’s friends. And in any case, after the Ireland business two years ago, I thought it had been agreed that he wasn’t going to be allowed to come under the influence of Horab again.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” said Mother. “I think that this term he really has worked very hard and I’m still quite sure that one of these days he will surprise us all.”

  “Yes, by ending up in prison or in an asylum—What John wants is an honest job of work that’ll take him out of himself—he can’t go on brooding over the Yorkshire affair for ever—just look what he’s cost you—he must have cost you and Daddy at least twice as much as me and Melanie put together, and what good has it done him? He’s eighteen and he hasn’t even got his School Certificate yet. If he doesn’t hurry up George says that they won’t take him at any Medical School let alone at Dublin where they—”

  “Oh please Mary, don’t! I can’t stand it and you know how it hurts me. I think it’s most inconsiderate of you to bring it all up like this. You haven’t got any sons, you can’t know what it’s like—how I worry at night. I’ve begged you not to mention it time and again—it’s all over now and I’m quite sure he’s getting over it. We must love him, mustn’t we Teddy? and have faith that one day his great gifts—”

  “What great gifts? He hasn’t got any gifts. That’s just what annoys me, worries me, Mother Darling. You will keep putting your head into the sand and imagining John’s going to be a great man of some sort. I don’t want to hurt you, honestly I don’t but I do feel that if you’d only face up to it and realise that John is just a rather ordinary problem boy, that he hasn’t shown any signs of any talents whatsoever, except for getting himself expelled from every school he’s ever been sent to—”

  From his position by the window John could hear the angry little puffs she inflicted on her cigarette. “George is not against him, he’s very fond of him and he’s just finished his fourth year course in psychology and he says that John is quite definitely—”

  He heard the sound of Mother’s sobs, Mary’s voice faltering, and could anticipate her sudden dismay at the fatal signal of Mother’s tears, the swift retrenchment she would make in order to avert the storm which would surely follow. He had heard
it all before, overheard it all before a dozen times; it no longer even hurt him; it merely bored him; it had not one tenth of the power to pierce and wound the secret boundaries of his sensibility possessed by the inanimate things which surrounded him.

  He knew how it would end: in Father seizing the opportunity of allying himself with Mother for a few uncomfortable minutes, in some talk of urgent prayers over at the little Church, and in Mary striding off jaggedly down the drive to Plas David to retail the whole story first to Melanie and Betty Cae Ficer the maid, later to George arriving in his sports car for yet another week-end of his exhausting courtship.

  Leaving the drawing-room on tiptoe, opening and closing the door very quietly, he went through to the bathroom and washed thoroughly in front of the open window through which the sun and the scent of the wallflowers flooded like a golden waterfall. He parted his hair carefully, borrowed some of Father’s cheap solid brilliantine ‘Perfumed with lavender’, as it said on the tin; and then lighting a cigarette strolled out through the front door down the drive to the garage.

  He waited there for about five minutes half-way between the two houses: Plas David, rose-pink beneath its pine trees, the signboard swinging gently in the wind, and Llanasaph, his home, a whitewashed agglomeration of cubes and rectangles like a multiple cottage built by some mad Welsh architect.

  He pretended to himself that he had only just arrived, that he had not yet walked down the drive nor entered the house. He went on to suppose that he had done well in the exam in Bangor, had quite definitely passed it, and that next term he would be starting Medicine in Ireland. In the meantime, he told himself, life was very pleasurable and exciting; Greenbloom and a poet had arrived in Greenbloom’s new Hispano Suiza, and shortly, he, John, would be having dinner with them and Michael at Plas David, his sister’s superior guest house, after which they would all run over to Lady Geraldine Bodorgan’s house and meet at least half a dozen beautiful young girls from one of England’s most exclusive schools who would be ‘peegeeing’ with the family’s aristocratic friends for at least eight weeks.

  He went over all this in his mind twice stiffening it by the addition of desirable little details in the second recitation until he was quite convinced of its truth; and then as he heard Mary’s footsteps crunching over the brown gravel he opened and closed the garage door with a bang, turned the corner and walked towards her comfortably, letting the smoke from his Woodbine trail behind him opulently as he patted the wallflower in his buttonhole. He was enjoying it so much that of course he didn’t notice her until they were abreast of one another. She stopped and he looked at her.

  Her eyelids were a little swollen at the roots of the lashes, and between them the dark brown eyes, so like his own, smouldered behind their recent tears.

  “You’re very late? How did you get on?”

  “Splendidly!”

  “What was it today?”

  “Maths.”

  “I thought that was your weak subject?”

  “Yes, but I was lucky; I made hay of it.”

  “That sounds cheering for us all.”

  “I mean in the good sense.”

  “Oh.”

  “Has Greenbloom arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh good! Are they in the house?”

  “No, they’ve gone into Benllwch—with Michael.”

  “Oh, what time’s dinner?”

  “You’re having it over at the Plas and it will be at seven o’clock. Afterwards Mother wants you to help me with the washing-up—if there’s time; so don’t be late.”

  “How do you mean, if there’s time?” he asked.

  “Oh, Geraldine’s invited you all over to Porth Newydd; but you’re not to use the car. Greenbloom will be taking you.”

  “What fun—I say, what’s his friend like?”

  “I haven’t seen him; but I should imagine that he’ll be long-haired, unhealthy and dirty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he writes poetry and is permanently out of work. He sponges on Greenbloom—in the way Michael once did.”

  “Ah!” he spoke with careful urbanity. “You think he’ll come to a bad end, do you?”

  “What do you mean? I never said so; you can’t come to a bad end if you haven’t made a good beginning—and I bet he hasn’t!”

  “Oh, nothing! I only meant either prison or an asylum!”

  Mary turned away frowning to herself.

  “You’re mad! You’d better get washed and come over right away. You can lay the table.”

  “Too adolescent, that’s my trouble—pale in the mornings.” He smiled and began to walk down towards the house leaving her where she was; but before he had taken three paces, she had caught up with him.

  “Have you just got back?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Where are your books then?”

  “In the house,” it was a fatal slip. “I mean in the garage,”

  “They’re not—you’re lying.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you’ve been listening—eavesdropping. You’ve already been into the house and—”

  “And what?”

  “You went into the drawing-room and listened to our conversation through the window, didn’t you?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  She drew on her cigarette eyeing him with cold distaste through the smoke.

  “Why don’t you admit it?”

  “I do; but it wasn’t conversation, you see; not where you were concerned anyway. It was horrible! it made me feel ill; it made me feel I’d like to go and drown myself—in the Race.”

  “Sometimes I think it would be best for everyone if you did.”

  “Oh good!” He seized and shook her hand before she could snatch it away. “I’m so glad you agree with me. One day, I promise I’ll do it and I’ll wait for you there.”

  She wiped her hand on her dress and then threw her cigarette into the wallflowers beside the drive.

  “When George comes I’m going to get him to speak seriously to Mother and Father about you.—”

  “Good old George!” He turned once again, “All the dirty work; now and for the rest of his life.”

  He began to run; he ran past the well, up the three steps between the hydrangeas, round the corner of the house, past the trough-garden and onto the terrace where Mother and Father were sitting in front of the blinding white wall on either side of the discarded tea-tray.

  “Hello Pet!” He kissed Mother quickly; her short arm came round his shoulders for a moment. “What a late tea you’re having!”

  “Take the tray in to Nanny,” she said. “How did you get on, John?”

  “Not too bad! I did reasonably well in the Geometry, I think, a good three quarters of the Algebra, and a bit dubiously in the Mechanics.” He felt warm towards her because she had stood to his defence more loyally than he would ever have supposed. Usually he found it difficult to be physically demonstrative to Mother; but now he was able to override the boundaries of his distaste and to embrace her eagerly, kissing her soft and always cold cheek. “It’s your fault, you know, Mother darling; we get it from you, we’re all absolutely hopeless when it comes to figures.”

  “At Uppingham,” said Father somnolently, “I topped the sixth in Maths and Classics, didn’t I, Kitty?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t meet you till you’d left Oxford. Don’t be daft, Teddy!”

  “Squashed again!”

  “Well it’s so stupid! As if what you did at Uppingham in the last century was going to be of any help to anyone fifty years later. It’s John we’re worried about.” She uncrossed her small legs irritably on her little chaise longue. “Hurry up and take that tray in,” she said to John, “Mary wants you to go and give them a hand at the Plas before dinner.”

  “I know.” He picked up the tray and went in through the garden door of the drawing-room.

  Nanny was in the tiny kitchen basting the chicken. H
e kissed her, noticing the prick of the little hairs on her upper lip.

  “Oh you’re back.” Pleasure illumined her tiredness. “I was just wonderin’ about you—Did you get on all right today, dear?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I did—if I didn’t I’m going to go and drown myself, Poo,” he replied, using her pet name.

  “You mustn’t say things like that, that’s very wicked—Pet. Yer Mother and Father—”

  “I’m not telling them,” he said. “It’s our secret. You’d miss me, wouldn’t you, Poo?”

  “It’s very wrong to think of such things; don’t say it to yer Mother even as a joke. She’d be very upset. Yer Mother is very fond of you.”

  “Yes, when Mary and Melanie aren’t about.”

  “You’re having dinner over there with this Mr Greenbloom and his friend. That’ll be nice won’t it? I said you’d like that, and Lady Bodorgan was on the telephone to yer mother, so you’ll all be going over there after yer dinner. She’s got some pretty girls there for you so just remember and don’t go thinking wicked things any more and upsetting yer mother.

  “You’re sweet! If I have passed I’ll buy you a huge present: a hat or a pair of shoes for your collection—”

  “Yer Mother and Father have been over to the Church twice praying for you; so go back to them now like a good boy.”

  “All right,” he moved closer to her and whispered. “Don’t say anything will you, pet? I was quite serious and I felt it might help if I told someone jokingly—it sometimes does. I can’t explain, but sometimes I feel so terribly unhappy that it seems the only thing to do. I don’t believe in anything these days; can you understand what it’s like?”

  She dribbled quick spoonfuls of fat over the chicken.

  “It’s very wicked to think such things! Go on now dear! she’ll wonder what’s keeping you.”

  “But you know me Poo, don’t you? You’ve looked after me ever since I was born. You don’t think I’m a fool do you, or that I’m a bit mad? I’m not, am I? Just tell me that I’m not and then I’ll feel better.”