“To the Warden? Not since I lunched with him on my first day here. I don’t think we’d find much to talk about.”
“We ought to have crossed a stream.” Tandon had stopped again and was studying his map. “Should you say we’ve crossed a stream?”
Quail looked about him. On one side, some five yards away, a woman was taking down washing from a line. On the other a man was hammering a sheet of rusty corrugated iron to the roof of a bicycle-shed. Ahead, the ribbon of concrete moved straight on through a vista of similar activities. “It’s quite likely that we have,” Quail said. “But they’ll have put it in a culvert.”
“Precisely. In fact, I think I can see our position exactly. We turn east at a Dutch barn and go through a five-barred gate. Or is it a stile? Yes – I believe it’s a stile. But, of course, the stile will have gone.”
Quail had no doubt that the Dutch barn would have gone too. He began to see something alarmingly symbolic about Tandon’s country walk, but he wasn’t very clear as to just what the symbolism consisted in.
“But perhaps he’s written to you? You’re in correspondence with him?”
“With Jopling? I assure you I’m not.”
“I think we must be careful. Yes—I think we must be on our guard.” Tandon produced this as if conscious that he might have appeared to be holding Quail himself in some suspicion. “He’s in communication with Miss Fontaney, you know. There’s no doubt about that.”
“It’s true that the Fontaneys lunched at the Lodge.” Quail took a curious glance at Tandon, and wondered what all this was tending to. “But you were there yourself. And I can’t see that you’d have been invited if Jopling had been planning to go behind your back. Besides, it was a matter in which Miss Fontaney must have taken the initiative, as far as I can see. She must have presumed on some acquaintance she had with the Joplings in order to enquire if she might have an opportunity of taking a look at young Manningtree. If there was anything odd about it, the oddity was in Miss Fontaney, not in Jopling.”
“Of course she’s odd. It’s what I’ve been saying. And it’s just that oddity that Jopling will exploit. If we don’t look out, Quail, he’ll secure the whole thing.”
“You think Jopling wants Fontaney’s journals? I really can’t see that you have any evidence for that at all. My own opinion was that Fontaney is little more than a name to him.”
“Mrs Jopling has money.” Rather ominously, Quail thought, Tandon had ignored rational challenge. “It’s my belief that they’ll offer for everything. The woman will get hold of Fontaney’s things, lock, stock, and barrel, and scatter them over that confounded Lodge. Think of it, man! Fontaney’s things all mixed up with those beastly cyclamens and great vulgar ticking clocks.”
Quail might have disastrously laughed aloud at this if he hadn’t been held by a certain surprise at finding Tandon’s awareness of the external universe extending to Mrs Jopling’s mundus muliebris. “But I thought,” he said, “that you didn’t attach importance to what Fontaney contrived to collect around himself?”
“Not at all. It is most important . . . most important. And I owe the perception of it to yourself. I had neglected the matter, I am ashamed to say. But now, of course, I see it. If the things were dispersed – or were as good as dispersed in the hands of a philistine woman like that – it would be a calamity . . . entirely a calamity.”
“It doesn’t strike you that they’re a calamity where they are?”
Tandon looked blankly at Quail, and then resumed his glaring into an infinity that lay dead ahead. “I don’t follow you.”
“I have a notion that Miss Fontaney might have been a little happier, and her sister a great deal happier, if there had been a thorough-going sale a few months after Fontaney died.”
“What an extraordinary idea!” Tandon took another quick glance at Quail, who felt that it was for the purpose of estimating his sanity. “It seems to me miraculous that everything has been preserved as it has. Nothing could be more fortunate, and we must do all in our power to profit by the situation. It would be a thousand pities if the stuff was dispersed – or even carried away.”
“Carried away?”
“For instance, to America.”
Here at least, Quail admitted to himself, was a very reasonable suspicion. “I had it in mind,” he said. “I rather coveted any and all memorials of Fontaney for a destination you can guess at. And I’m still dead keen about the journals. I give you fair notice of that, my dear chap; although I don’t in the least see that it need present us doing a lot together. But about all that stuff – well, I’ve changed my mind.”
“Changed your mind!” Tandon was scandalised.
“Well—haven’t you changed your own? Put it that we’ve switched round. You’ve taken over my notion that there ought to be a sort of Fontaney museum. And I’ve taken over yours that the bits and pieces aren’t all that important.”
Tandon was silent, so that Quail had an uncomfortable impression that his distrust was growing. If they were going to have any sort of confidential conference, or even an impersonal discussion of the heart and substance of Fontaney’s work, it was proving, like the rural peace that ought to be enfolding them, slow to begin. Not that there wasn’t now a glimpse of open country ahead; they had only to skirt an extensive rubbish dump and there would be green fields for the asking. But Tandon didn’t seem aware of this. He tramped for some time in silence, lost in thought. When he spoke, it was rather stiffly. “I’ve no doubt that you’re being frank – perfectly frank. So I really ought to say that it’s something like a museum that I have in mind myself. The house should be taken over as it stands – some sort of fund, you know – and then presented to the university. But not as a museum in the strict sense. Rather, it should be for some suitable person to live in. Suppose that we ever got a Chair of Aesthetics – a most desirable thing. The house could go along with it, and the Professor would no doubt admit qualified persons to view it at convenient times.”
“And until there’s such a Chair?”
“It could remain in the occupancy of—of the present ladies.”
“I doubt whether Miss Fontaney will want a house for long. You’d have only Marianne as curator – and I suppose the person with the mop.”
“The mop?” Tandon’s vigilance in the external world didn’t extend to his picking up this. “I’m sure Miss Marianne would be most conscientious.”
“God help her – I’ve no doubt she would.” Quail spoke with energy. “And it seems to me she’s likely to have the responsibility of deciding, anyway.”
“You think Miss Marianne will have that?”
Tandon had been startled, and Quail recognised it as one of the moments at which a new idea came to him. “I think,” he said, “it’s a substantial possibility. Remember I’m agreeing with you about Miss Fontaney herself. She’s being very reasonable now, and her treatment of the two of us is thoroughly handsome. But at a pinch, if you ask me, the thing will go wrong with her. I mean from our point of view.”
“Ah!” Tandon pounced. “You really believe that Jopling—”
“Put Jopling out of your head. I mean simply that she’ll hang on. The whole basis of her conduct is intense family feeling. Her absurd notion about your booby of a Lord Michael turned on that. There isn’t any sort of heir. There isn’t even any sort of colourable relationship in the most tenuously suitable direction. The result, I say, will be that she’ll simply hang on. And then, quite suddenly as likely as not, she’ll die.” Quail came to a halt. “Wouldn’t it be better,” he asked, “to try to work round this thing?”
“Miss Fontaney’s—?”
“This rubbish-tip, or whatever it’s called.”
Recalled to the topographical aspect of their expedition Tandon once more opened his map. “Straight across,” he said. “There can be no doubt of it. Or I think there can be no doubt. But just be ready with that sixpence.”
CHAPTER V
Neither a farmer nor a farme
r’s dog, it seemed to Quail, was a likely threat on this part of their ramble. The rubbish dump was even more extensive than had at first appeared, and they moved across it diagonally on the ghost of a path which for the moment was fairly firm beneath their feet. In the middle distance, two tip-up lorries lurked beneath palls of dust; nearer at hand an old woman poked about with a stick; here and there the surface smoked or steamed, as if they had entered a region of the earth where volcanic disturbance was imminent. Tandon took another glance at the map. “Beware of the bull,” he said.
Quail laughed. “Do you mean the bulldozer? It seems more likely.”
“A pair of horns means the possible presence of a bull. A very useful sign to have.” Tandon looked about him. “Yes,” he added, “yes . . . I quite see the joke.” He laughed in what might have been described as a conscientious manner, and trudged on.
This was rather depressing. So was the smell, for they were approaching a part of the dump where refuse had been more recently deposited. The surface, too, was deteriorating; every now and then one’s foot went down with a displeasing squelch. Quail thought that their spirits might be improved by starting a more serious discussion of Fontaney’s work than they had yet arrived at. But to his surprise Tandon’s attention was hard to fix, and presently his companion broke off abruptly to another theme. “That younger sister,” he said. “Do you think anything could be done with her?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean.” Quail, whose mind was now running on other matters, didn’t make much of this. “Are you wondering whether Marianne Fontaney has—well, potentialities that don’t immediately appear; or are you considering whether she could be persuaded to back us up?”
“I took a short walk with her one day.” Tandon avoided a direct reply. “Not a country tramp like this, you know; simply a turn round the Parks. She was very attentive.”
Quail felt amused. The term was just the right one for a pupil undergoing peripatetic instruction. “She mentioned it,” he said. “I gathered you’d had a little talk about unprovable theorems.”
If Tandon recognised in this any mild irony he gave no sign. “She appeared to me to have . . . a gentle nature.”
“To promise docility?”
This time Tandon did turn a quick glance on Quail. “She struck me as one who would take a reasonable view.”
“Perhaps she would. My own impression of Marianne is of an underlying firmness of character.”
“Really?” Tandon was both interested and doubtful. “That is most uncommon in a woman . . . most uncommon.”
Quail felt that, as another bachelor, he had no special qualification for contraverting this. Nor, somehow, did he much want to discuss Marianne Fontaney in this way. He endeavoured, therefore, to turn the conversation back to its former course. “It seems to me that the main assumption towards which Fontaney was moving—”
“Wasn’t that a shout?” Tandon had stopped nervously in his tracks. “Could it be to warn us of the bull?”
“It was certainly a shout. And they’re waving at us.” Quail pointed to a couple of men standing by the tip-up lorries. “I think they’re suggesting we turn back.”
“Quite absurd.” Tandon tapped the map. “Wholly unwarranted. I don’t think we need even tender the sixpence. I will simply hand them my card. There is an unquestionable right of way.”
“I doubt whether it’s anything of that sort that’s in their mind. I fancy they simply want to warn us—”
But Tandon had marched on. The men, after another shout or two, returned to their labour. Tandon was triumphant. “You see?” he said. “They know perfectly well that they have no authority—no authority at all . . . confound!”
In the circumstances, the exclamation was a mild one. Quail had come to a halt just in time to save himself. Tandon was almost knee-deep in indescribable slime.
It was fortunate, Quail thought some fifteen minutes later, that a keen, if chill, breeze was now blowing. He shifted – he hoped unobtrusively – to his companion’s other side. The fact had to be faced that for the rest of the ramble Tandon would have a bad smell.
“Perfectiy scandalous . . . write to the Oxford Magazine . . . take the matter up with the Preservation Trust . . .” Tandon had for some time maintained a muttering progress after this fashion, but now he pointed ahead and changed his tone. “Well, here’s the open country at last. We skirt the hedge, drop down to the stream, and there are stepping-stones just short of that farm.”
Quail surveyed the terrain before them with what was now perhaps pardonable distrust. The building at which Tandon was pointing didn’t look to him like a farm – or at least not an English farm. It had a veranda round three sides of it, and a broad gravel sweep on which there were parked at least a dozen cars. Nor did what he had taken to be pasture-land around it now appear to be that at all. It was dotted with moving figures in twos and fours. “Isn’t that a golf-course?” he mildly enquired.
“A golf-course?” Tandon fiddled with the map. “Very possibly the land has been appropriated . . . or misappropriated for that purpose. It’s a very bad thing . . . aerodromes too . . . perverting valuable acres to unproductive uses.” As Tandon’s trousers were clinging damply and greasily to his calves, this atrabilious vein, Quail felt, was very natural. “But, of course, it makes no difference—no difference whatever. The map is particularly clear – quite unequivocal. A double line of red dots. But I’m afraid I interrupted you earlier on when you were going to talk about Fontaney’s ideas. What do you make of that notebook, 1916, I think, in which he sketches out his essay on empathy?”
Quail responded promptly. Rather unexpectedly as it was now, he found himself back with the Gavin Tandon with whom he had talked – to whose admirable scholarship, indeed, he had respectfully listened – in Lady Elizabeth’s attic drawing-room. When Tandon got going in this fashion he became almost another man. The walk looked like being a success after all. Unfortunately, even while talking with fluency and concentration, Tandon remained aware both of the double line of red dots on the map and of the moral obligations they imposed on him. As the greater part of the golf-course was somewhat unimaginatively laid out on approximately parallel lines, and as the dots happened virtually to bisect each of these in turn, their progress caused a certain amount of dislocation on the fairways. Most of the players waited patiently till they were out of the way – but some shouted, and of this Tandon eventually became aware. “Disgraceful!” he said. “It’s intolerable enough from uneducated men, like those on that piece of waste ground. But I believe it’s largely university people who play golf here. They should know better. I think I’ll stop and show them the map.”
“I doubt whether it’s worth doing that.” Quail fancied he had just heard a ball go past disconcertingly close overhead. “And I believe that what they shout is a technical expression. I think it’s Fore, and means that play is taking place in this direction.”
“You may be right.” Tandon now stopped and looked round with frank belligerence. Several voices continued to shout. “But the law is most explicit on the subject of ball-games played near or over a right of way. You must have noticed the case of a cricketer who—” A further and very urgent shout checked him for a moment. “Of a cricketer, I say, who—” Tandon again broke off – but this time with a howl of agony. A moment later he was writhing on the turf, with his hands clutched on a knee.
Quail knelt beside him. He was shocked to find a disposition in himself to view this second and painful misadventure of Tandon’s in a ludicrous light. One couldn’t be as immediately alarmed as if he’d suffered a crack on the head – and yet an injured knee could be an uncommonly nasty thing. Conscious of this, Quail was about to find something at once solicitous and of practical utility to say, when a bluff voice spoke from behind him.
“My dear sir, I’m very sorry about this. I must have sliced the ball badly. But I’m bound to say that you’ve been behaving—”
The voice – it was familiar – br
oke off. Quail turned round, and found that he was looking at Jopling.
If the Warden was disconcerted at finding it was a colleague upon whom he had done execution, he didn’t particularly show it. His attitude, in fact, became noticeably more robust. “Tandon, my dear fellow, what an extraordinary thing! Knee, is it? Well, there can’t be much wrong, or you wouldn’t be able to kick about like that. And Mr—um—Quail? Good afternoon. Now, what had we better do?”
“Nothing, thank you, Warden – nothing at all.” Tandon sat up on the grass and straightened his glasses. He was very pale. Quail hoped that this was from passion rather than sheer physical agony. “Please continue with your game.”
“No good – no good at all. Useless unless I could have reached the last green with my iron. And I’m bound to say it wasn’t a bad shot. If you hadn’t got in the way—” The Warden paused, with all the air of a forbearing man. “As it is, my opponent’s gone straight back to the club-house. Quail, what had we better do? I dare say I could get my car up here. A bit bad for the turf, though. A wheel-barrow might be better. Tandon, could you ride in a wheel-barrow?”
“Thank you, Warden. I shall have no need of a conveyance. I have no doubt that, in a few minutes, I shall be perfectly able to walk.”
“Agony abated—eh?” Jopling nodded cheerfully. “Dashed odd smell round about here.”
“I smell.” Tandon made this stark announcement through grinding teeth.
“Do you, indeed? Well, I’m bound to say I never noticed it before.” Jopling was so delighted with this childish pleasantry that he laughed aloud. “And now, let’s see whether we can get you on your pins. Other people wanting to play the eighteenth, you know. Just take my arm.”
The Guardians Page 14
