So it did not matter, on these terms, whether or not it had been the same man. There were thousands of such people in the World; quite apart from the millions of men who had killed with honour in the Great War. There were multitudes of murderers and eccentrics at large whose crimes and follies were only noticed if they happened to be unfashionable. In an educated society, one that had absorbed a valid philosophy like Greenbloom’s, there would be no fashions and therefore no need for Police, Judges, or Priests, because its members would realise that responsibility did not exist; that the acts of everyone were as remote as the emanations of the night stars, which, though they appeared to make up constellations and be involved one with another were in reality separated by distances so vast that they failed to share even the same Time.
And if Time was an illusion then so were responsibility and guilt and Greenbloom was right.
Beside him the girl stirred. She withdrew her left arm from the back of the seat and folding it across her lap said:
“I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“I’m sorry—what did you say?”
“I said I wished I hadn’t told you that.”
The repetition of the sense of her first remark recalled to him the actual words she had used and it was to these that he replied from the midst of his preoccupation.
“Of course you should have told me. I wanted you to tell me.”
“No, I meant about being sick. A thing like that puts people off, doesn’t it?”
He sat up. “Good Heavens no! I’d forgotten all about that. You must think me unsympathetic. I was trying to work something out, you see, and it was very difficult.”
“About my man on the train?”
“Yes, partly. It was like something that happened to me once and I was wondering whether to tell you about it and then I decided I wouldn’t.”
“Was that what this Greenbloom man was talking about to you?”
“Yes.”
“And did he tell you not to talk about it?”
“I suppose he did in a way.”
“Well, I think that’s jolly unfair,” she said. “He lets you tell him all about it and then advises you to tell no one else, not even me when I’ve just confided something in you that I wouldn’t have dreamed of telling to anyone except perhaps Brigid.”
He stared through the brackish darkness at her. Something about her spontaneity, the ingenuous school-girl indignation of her outburst, reminded him of Victoria. The very tone of her sentences, quick and unwatched, the little shake of her head disturbing the dark outline of her hair, brought back to him the clear remembrance of Victoria’s presence as sharply as did the scent of heather or the bars of the Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.
With total recollection and an excitement so powerful that he was momentarily unable to speak or to move, he was once again at the lake-side in Northumberland hearing the vanished sounds of the forest, seeing the dead and living face of Victoria as she stood before him with her eyes closed while he breathed in afresh the scent of still water, mud and growing trees.
She was not, this girl was not, never could be the same. No one could rise from the grave and wear the liveries of the dead or carry again the particular loveliness which had flowered once and once only in one person. But she was like, she was wonderfully like. She was tall pale delicate and generous in the way Victoria had been generous: ready to quarrel with warmth, to sit walk or stand with you at your suggestion and to say what she thought the moment she thought it.
She was no more afraid of unhappiness than Victoria had been, drooped in the same way when she felt depressed, thought and felt alone if she must, yet did not want to go on with it afterwards and rebuff you from behind a closed door like all those others he half-remembered. But more than all this, with all her differences: eyes that were darker, a less immediate gaiety and a lighter voice, she was alive; a person and not an idea; someone who could be seen with the eyes, quarrelled with and crossed, touched and loved with the lips hands and the whole shivering conjunction of the mind and body.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m awfully sorry.”
“Oh that’s all right! I’m just a fool, I always blurt things out to people and then regret it afterwards. If you really want to know I’d have told you in any case. It’s no good pretending that I’m reserved. I was only doing that to try and embarrass you and make you feel mean.”
“I know you were,” he said. “That’s why I’m sorry that I can’t tell you. But perhaps one day I’ll be able to.”
“When?”
“Next year in Ireland,” he said.
“In Ireland?”
“Yes. You live there don’t you? Well next year at the very latest I’ll be going there. I’m going to start Medicine in Trinity College Dublin; at least I am provided I’ve passed an exam I’ve just been taking.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes.”
“How odd.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going there myself next year. I’m going to read Modern Languages—my Mother was at T.C.D. and we only live a few miles outside Dublin.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dymphna. What’s yours?”
“John—Blaydon.” She did not question it; it meant nothing to her and gratitude illumined him.
“If I’d known I was going to see you again I don’t think I would have told you all that,” she said. “Seriously.”
“But it’s wonderful!” He talked wildly, mixing the tumble of his metaphors in his sudden exhilaration. “The very best sort of introduction, something very private and generous like—real hospitality where you give something to a person, not just a name or a look at your house but part of you—part of yourself. Things that happen to you are you in a way.”
“Yes, but then you’ve given me nothing in return.”
“Yes, I have. Like a good guest I’ve taken everything you offered and enjoyed it and been interested.”
“You’re very quick aren’t you?” She smiled at him through the shadows. “Are you Irish too?”
“Only a little. I’ve got some rather splendid cousins who live in Ireland.”
“That’ll be useful.”
“Will it?”
“Very! it’s the snobbiest country in the World. My parents nearly crippled themselves sending me to Wycombe Abbey just for the snob-value of it. Isn’t it absurd?”
“No, I don’t think so. I love splendour and flunkeys myself and I’m always wishing we were richer or had a title in the family.”
“Oh that’s different. What I meant was that it’s ridiculous to behave as though you were rich when you’re not. For instance, do you know why it is that I’m having to P.G. here for the next few weeks instead of going home to Kildare?”
“No.”
“Because my Parents have the house full of P.G.s themselves and there’s no room for the rest of the family until some of them leave. Naturally they weren’t expecting me to break up so soon. Now, you must admit that’s stupid?”
He laughed happily. “Yes that really is.”
“And they, I know, will be saying in their most far-back voices ‘Darling Dymphna, our eldest, is staying with Admiral and the Lady Geraldine Bodorgan in Anglesey you know,’ and having to stick a little bit extra on the bills of their own P.G.s in order to pay for it.” She broke off, “Good Gracious! What on Earth’s that!”
They listened, on the lawn behind the Shrubbery someone was shouting. In syllables shortened by rage yet thick and fat with the vigour behind their pronunciation, they heard the word, ‘Cox’n!’ sounding out beneath the moonlight, repeated each time louder and with more fearful emphasis.
“Cox’n! COX’N! Call away the Barge.”
“Good God,” said John. “It’s the Admiral and he’s coming here.”
“Whatever for?”
John got up. “You’ll see,” he said. “Quick! We’d better get out. No! wait; we’d better stay here or he’ll see
us. He may only be drunk.”
“What fun! I adore drunken people, there are hundreds of them in Ireland.”
“You won’t adore him: he’s frightfully dangerous when he’s drunk, almost as dangerous as when he’s sober. He got chucked off the Magistrate’s Bench here the other day for assaulting the local doctor because he disagreed with him over a careless driving case.”
“But why’s he coming here?”
“That’s just what I don’t know.” He pointed to the punt, “You see this thing—this punt?”
“Is it a punt? It doesn’t look like one.”
“I know it doesn’t, but that’s because he’s put a roof and brass dolphins and things all over it to make it look like an Admiral’s Barge—and unless he’s drunk or even if he is drunk, it sounds very much as though he’s going to go out in it tonight.”
“Now?”
“It sounds like it,” he whispered. “Keep quiet for a minute, he’s just coming down the path.”
Standing together in the open mouth of the boathouse concealed by its shadows from the moonlight shining down on the wooden staging which projected over the water they watched the entrance at the farther end of the lake.
They saw Sambo enter first: the luminous vee of his shirt, his normally scarlet face now changed by anger and the moonlight to a leaden-white colour. He walked stiffly with all the reluctance of a military prisoner and was closely followed by the burly silver-haired figure of the Admiral. Even at this distance they could see the Admiral’s eyes, whiter than a minstrel’s, gleaming out of the dark convexities of his face. Both were carrying things: Sambo with embarrassment, the Admiral carelessly, and at the first of the balustrades they halted and laid them down on the stone where some minutes earlier Greenbloom had stood his flask.
The Admiral who was wearing dark slacks and an open-necked shirt, wiped his neck and forehead on a silk handkerchief and then turning his back on Sambo bellowed out once again across the lawn.
“Cox’n! COX’N! Call away the Barge!”
Somewhere a dog barked, they heard its hysterical response leap-frog out from the kennels round by the Stables and then there was silence.
Sambo spoke. “Really Bodorgan,” he said coldly, “I think this is taking things a little far. I feel that one is entitled to an opinion without being called upon to—”
“Opinion be damned!” replied the Admiral swivelling round to face him. “An insult is not an opinion. You insulted me in me own house and what is more you insulted the Navy and I intend to vindicate the Senior Service here and now.” He glared round once again at the pathway.
“If that feller doesn’t come soon—”
“Since it is Saturday night,” said Sambo haughtily, “and Hughes is almost certainly in Beaumaris I think that if you’re going to insist on this demonstration it would be as well if we postponed it until tomorrow.” He stepped towards the entrance and, beside John, Dymphna shivered. He saw that in her anxiety she was biting her lower lip and that her eyes were wide.
“Are they really serious?” she whispered.
“Of course they are, they hate each other like poison—over Lady G—and they’ve obviously emptied the better part of a bottle of whisky between them.”
“But they can’t be—even in Ireland—”
The Admiral spoke again. “I think I ought to warn you, Stretton, that if you are intending to return to the house I shall have no hesitation in shooting you—in the back. I have my Father’s revolver here and it is fully loaded.”
Sambo halted at once and turned round.
“Either you are drunk, Bodorgan, or else you are mad,” he said distinctly.
The Admiral smiled dangerously and they saw the shine of his large false-teeth as he looked across at his adversary over the shaking barrel of an old-fashioned revolver which he carried in his right hand.
“I am posting you as my Cox’n with effect as from—pass me my chronometer—”
In the pause, after a momentary hesitation, Sambo picked up a round object like a clock and handed it to him.
“With effect as from 22.30 hours today, G.M.T.,” went on the Admiral, “and keep your distance.”
“If you took my remark about the Admiralty as a reflection on your own seamanship, Bodorgan—” began Sambo.
“You will address me as Sir,” said the Admiral, “and you will bring aboard my chronometer, compass, my night-glasses, sextant and barometer.”
“I am perfectly prepared to withdraw my remarks unconditionally—Sir,” said Sambo distinctly.
“You will then propel my Barge according to instructions,” went on the Admiral remorselessly, “while I prove to you that His Majesty’s sea lords are not incapable of navigating ‘anything but a desk through a sea of paper—’ Those were your words I believe?”
“I repeat, Sir, that I am perfectly ready to withdraw them. I think we might return to the house before Gerry”—they saw Sambo’s hand go to his moustache as he corrected himself—“before Lady Geraldine—”
“My wife, whatever her other failings may be,” interrupted the Admiral swiftly, “knows better than to interfere with my professional dispositions, and as for the withdrawal of your remarks about the Service, it’s too damned easy to recant when the damage is done, when a good name and a reputation have been smirched.” He paused and then spoke more quietly and with heavy emphasis. “You may, if you care to, look upon myself and my colleagues of equivalent rank as a group of impotent bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the realities of situations—either private or public. If that is your opinion you are entitled to it provided, Stretton, you do not express it in my presence. When you do that it ceases to be an opinion, as I said before, and becomes an insult, one which it is my duty to redress without delay.” He drew himself to attention and waved his revolver at the equipment on the balustrade. “You will now give me that opportunity.”
With what was almost a shrug, a quick shake of his shoulders, Sambo picked up the things and followed by the Admiral marched briskly towards the boathouse.
“What shall we do?” whispered Dymphna.
“Out, quickly!”
Together they moved silently out through the open door and round to the shadowed side of the structure pressing close against the timbered wall.
From the inside they heard the Admiral bawling out his further instructions.
“You will light both lamps, port and starboard, and show a light at the masthead. It will be your duty to stream the log in order that I may make the necessary calculations, and in due time you will keep her steady fore and aft while I bring down the moon to the horizon and read my charts—”
Under cover of the noise, the clatter of things being loaded into the punt, the indignant throat-clearances of Sambo, the Admiral’s rounded roars, they slipped away together along the upper flagged terrace past the figure-heads leaning out of the shadows, the tall flag-staffs and the chimney-stacks belching their still tufts of heather and geraniums.
At the far end, safely under cover of the rhododendrons concealing the pathway, they paused and looked back.
The punt was sliding out into the centre of the lake, riding through the bright lattice of the moonlight with the Admiral, portly and erect as one of his own statues, standing in the bows with his sextant raised to the stars; and behind him, between the gleam of the brass dolphins whose curling tails flanked the little cabin, Sambo, punting with slow rhythmical strokes.
Standing there, side by side, they continued to watch; hearing the thrust of the water against the punt, the succession of falling drops from the pole, the sounds of their own breathing.
John spoke:
“I thought—” he said.
“What?”
But he did not reply. He had not intended to speak: a great grief weighed down upon him out of Heaven.
“Tell me—” she whispered as once, long ago, Victoria might have whispered; wanting to know, wanting to share, not quite serene in the eagerness of her generosity
. “What did you think?”
“All that—” he said loudly pointing to them: to old Clive and Sambo.
“They’re pathetic, aren’t they?” she suggested.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They hate each other. They’re doing nothing, they don’t see anything, they don’t know anything. They can think about nothing but their hatred although they’re so old—Lady Geraldine, who’s beautiful really I suppose: but alive! If she were dead—”
“Yes?”
“If she were dead, what would it solve?”
“I don’t know what you mean. What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, “once there were two people who loved the same person; and she died. I was one of them and I’d always thought that if only I could find someone like her, someone who seemed exactly like her in the way she affected me I mean, that it would stop my hatred, all that sort of thing: those two out there under the moon,” he swallowed. “Lunatics, respectable lunatics, fools, apes, old bodies and malice, men who should be wise because they’ve finished growing; wise enough to say, to know, to see; but they can’t even say. They’re liars both of them, blind to their own lies. They’re no better than I was when once I thought I was mad, blamed it on someone else who probably is mad, unrespectably mad, if you understand me. But now I’m frightened, terrified to think that I may never have been mad, that there may be no sanity anywhere for any of us whether we love or hate, find or lose, live or die.”
They were silent. The punt had nearly reached the middle of the lake, Sambo had ceased to pole because the water was too deep for him, and under the high night there was no single sound to be heard.
“I know what you mean,” she said, “but I think you’re wrong.”
“Where?”
“Well, in a way you’re sorry for them, aren’t you? That’s what makes you so angry, your sorrow.”
“Perhaps,” he said, not touching her. “Let’s go and find Greenbloom; he wanted to see this. I think if we could get him alone, by himself, he might be able to—say.”
“Listen!” she said.
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 44
