The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  As for himself, he was ready to retire altogether from business and devote the sixth decade of his energy to any cause that was neither pious nor political. It was his office that most troubled his conscience and led him to make this journey to Helsingfors. He was ashamed to put five loyal servants on to the labour market when he had the capital to keep them in his employ. In a year or two, if business recovery continued, he could easily find them permanent jobs; but for the moment he refused to be parted from them.

  Simon Bendrihem’s depression reached its nadir when they landed at Gothenburg. There was a sturdy provincialism about the place which overwhelmed the spirit with dullness. The houses had the beauty of great age but not the charm. They suggested that their inhabitants had been making money out of trade in the same offices in the same streets dripping with the same grey mist for the last four hundred years, and that it would be impossible to stir them to any lightness of spirit or any fanatical faith. Toby and he climbed thankfully into the night train and induced a heavy sleep by bounteous potations of schnapps.

  They awoke at Stockholm and, after sending their baggage down to the landing stage, breakfasted beside pale blue water over which white ferryboats scampered from quay to quay. The sun shone upon the serene pastel colours of the city, and the prospect of eight idle hours ahead, with neither house, hotel nor possessions, nor anything at all that ought to be done, pleasantly exaggerated a sense of leisure. They strolled along the light grey waterfronts, splashed by the red of geraniums in restaurant window boxes, and watched the ebb and flow of the city, islanded beside a café table; then lunched on Skeppsbrun and lovingly turned the pages of the Swedish Wine Monopoly’s list.

  Bendrihem opened his mouth to speak, and hesitated. He turned back from the German to the French wines.

  “I should like to try this Montrachet,” he said.

  “With all these Deinhard ’25s?” asked Toby incredulously. “I’ve forgotten all I ever knew about wines. Still, and at the price and considering …”

  “If you insist,” said Bendrihem, obviously hoping he would.

  “Oh, I see! Your boycott! But the wines have been Swedish property since Briming was chancellor. A little casuistry, old man! It’s carrying conscience too far.”

  “Perhaps it is,” laughed Simon. “But I’m inclined to do that when I am happy. A sort of superstition. I remember those who are not. What would you like?”

  “You choose. Give me the benefit of your experience. That ought to help the conscience a bit.”

  Bendrihem smiled and gave his order to the waitress. They settled down to a lunch of fresh and chilly fish and meats in aspic, in perfect harmony with blue water beyond white windows and the gentle heat of the forenoon.

  “This wine list,” said Toby, satisfied and discursive, “is the only attempt I ever came across to raise the taste of a people without bothering about their morals. Imagine the outcry in England if parliament appointed a committee to buy the best wines they could find and sell them at a reasonable profit. I like this country! Confound Seafair—I could do with a week here! And what women!”

  “They please you? A little tall and thin, I should have said.”

  “Tall and tenuous and vague. Delicious things,” replied Toby. “But possibly I am more susceptible than usual. Has it ever occurred to you, Bendrihem, that if a man is poor and has a palate for women like yours for wine he is driven into virginity?”

  “Is he? I don’t want to boast, but I haven’t found women mercenary.”

  “No. But the initial stages of romance cost too much. A dinner, a dance or even four cocktails—they are beyond one’s means. I’m talking of a passing affair with a pretty woman, of an age to know her own mind, who thinks that she might enjoy my attentions just as frankly and freely as I think I might enjoy hers. And I hold, from bitter experience, that poverty is a bar to it.”

  “What about the average pretty girl in the City, living in some awful female doss house, intelligent and very lonely?”

  Simon Bendrihem thought of his own secretary, a reserved creature of exotic beauty who terrified the young Englishmen within her reach and could only by the purest luck, in the short hours between office and boarding house, fall in with some man of mature taste who would appreciate her.

  “Very nice,” said Toby. “But one can’t open communications without entertaining the girl in some way.”

  “Your tastes are too expensive, Manning. You want to give the best and when you can’t you won’t play. I’ve a young nephew in Bloomsbury who thinks he can write music and never earns a penny. But I haven’t heard him complain of lack of women.”

  “It’s a question of surroundings. Your nephew is knocking about with a lot of women of pleasantly unconventional morality. They’re all broke together and a tête-á-tête tea party in the bathroom or a nice healthy walk on Hampstead Heath will pass as the preliminary gesture. When I was in New York, I used to patronise the Greenwich Village speakeasies and like your nephew I hadn’t any reason to complain. One bought a dollar’s worth of gin, listened to a lot of half-baked bilge about creative art and landed some nice little typist who thought one was so much more intelligent than a businessman merely because one talked a different patter. But I don’t know anything equivalent in London.”

  “Why not get married? Or have you been?”

  “Never. Very near it. I’ve been desperately in love, but the first three times didn’t lead to marriage—though each time I wanted it. So they acted as an inoculation. What about yourself anyway?”

  “I do not think I am very strongly sexed,” replied Bendrihem simply. “And there’s a girl whom I call on occasionally.”

  “No desire to raise a family?”

  “Not now. And twenty years ago I was too busy. My home is—well, I feel it belongs to my mother and my carpets. I rest there so completely. I don’t want to disturb it.”

  He emptied the rest of the Berncastler into Toby’s glass and his own.

  “How many’s that?” asked Toby.

  “Two.”

  “I thought my mouth was getting a little dry. Shall we split a third?”

  “It’s nearly four o’clock.”

  “Is it really? Well, just one more bottle will pass the time till we have to go for the boat.”

  Bendrihem laughed and agreed. It was a glorious wine, and there would certainly be no more of it when, if ever, he returned to Stockholm.

  “I wish Whitehead were with us!” exclaimed Toby, as the waitress drew the cork from the new bottle. “It’s a damned shame that a chap like that never has a chance to open up.”

  “Whitehead? Let me see—that polite young fellow in the export department?”

  “Yes. A most lovable man.”

  “Lovable? That’s a strong word. Now you mention him, I remember I’ve talked to him half a dozen times. It’s funny how inconspicuous he is.” Bendrihem was silent for a moment, examining the dim image of Albert Whitehead in the recess of his mind that held the personalities of Hanson & Crane. “And yet he isn’t. Perhaps you’re right. He does leave an impression, but I wasn’t aware of it. Like a woman one has been brought up with. You hear her praised by somebody else and suddenly you see she is beautiful. Do you suppose he’ll ever get anywhere?”

  “Meaning commercial success?”

  “Yes. There isn’t any other kind of success open to him, is there? Beyond content, I mean. And that’s success enough, heaven knows! But I meant the sort of job that would give him what you want for him.”

  “No. I suppose he’ll never get a chance,” Toby replied. “A factory worker has more prospects of an amusing life than the white-collar slave with one eye on gentility and the other on his boss. And when you get a real winner like Whitehead imprisoned in that class, it’s a tragedy. Even if he became managing director of Hanson & Crane I’d still call it a tragedy.”

  “All t
he same, I’ll do anything practical I can for him,” said Bendrihem, smiling.

  “Yes, do! I can’t help him much myself yet.”

  The Helsingfors boat was small and tidy as a steam yacht. They slept peacefully, and awoke among the myriad little patches of flat, dry rock fringing the coast of Finland. It was startling to pass in a night from Stockholm, a fine flower of civilisation, to a Europe that had the desolation of recently discovered lands. It was no longer the historic continent in which every square mile held some trace of man, though grass might have covered his tombs, or goats eaten up the mountain forests where he had once pastured his herds. Here man and even vegetation appeared as newcomers. Many of the islands were yet as the retreating ice and rising land had left them, whalebacks of smooth grey stone without soil. Some showed the beginnings of cultivable earth—a stunted pine tree growing from a crack, its roots spread out over the rock like the suckers of an insect, its branches slowly spilling enough vegetable débris for moss and grass to take hold. Upon others the rock had vanished beneath the covert of forest and heather which would endure until the ice came down again from the north and scraped it off.

  In the early afternoon the boat docked at Helsingfors, lying squat and massive behind its screen of fortified islands. They booked rooms at the same hotel, and then sought relaxation, each in his own way; Simon in bed, for he hated both travelling and arrival; Toby Manning in exercise of his restless legs. He was not sorry to be alone. It seemed to him that during the two strenuous weeks in London and the journey north he had had no time to take stock of himself. He needed to walk by himself over solid ground at four miles an hour, and think.

  He had what he wished; freedom from financial worry and an immediate destiny of men and cities. As for his job, he was confident of earning his salary and of satisfying Hanson & Crane so long as they made allowances for his inexperience. But to what was he dedicated? He answered himself as ruthlessly as a heard voice: to a blind-alley occupation of no conceivable advantage to any but Seafair and his shareholders. Toby suppressed this answer, reminding himself that he had money, all Europe before him and a large measure of responsibility, but he could not recapture the sense of fulfilment that he had felt when he left London.

  He was still a wanderer, cut loose from his traditions and background and without prospects of a home, driven by a destiny as arbitrary as that of the Wandering Jew. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that at least he must be laying the foundations of a wisdom less parochial than of those with roots in the soil; the wisdom, if there were such, of the pilgrim. But he was not convinced. The world, hostile and meaningless, seemed to encircle him, and since he had a truer conception than most of its size and variety, he suffered more. The greater the city, the lonelier the traveller. For an instant he was close to tears of self-pity, of homesickness for an unknown home.

  Toby had learned by experience that only a definite objective could make him more than temporarily content with his life, yet he could find no objective. None of the things that he had meant to do when he returned from the United States had he done. Politics? He would not be an asset to any party when his first instinct was to question their elementary and basic tenets. Good works? But organised charity demeaned the receiver. The communists were more honest than those who gave as a favour that to which every man had a right.

  He caught himself wishing that he had gone into the church. This false expression of a real desire, erupted by his labouring emotions, was so preposterous that it made him laugh. He believed in no established religion whatever, and indeed had watched at close quarters some of its nastiest manifestations. Fanatic enough to go out into the highways and byways and preach a gospel, he knew that it was in fact a longing for service which had produced his ridiculous regret that he had not taken orders.

  Toby recognised that again his nameless ambitions were stirring, and greeted them sourly but with a certain pleasure. They had been obscured by economic distress and the hunt for a job. Poverty destroyed his spiritual life; it might not do so, he admitted, in the climate of Palestine or Greece, but it inevitably did so in London. His rediscovery of a spiritual self restored emotional discipline. He would at any rate believe for the moment in Hanson & Crane’s toys and spread his confidence to the best of a salesman’s ability. It was indeed a limited gospel, but it would have to do until the appearance of another. He had always found a surface pleasure in thorough completion of the job at hand.

  Simon Bendrihem awoke refreshed and smoked a leisurely cigarette while looking out over the roofs of Helsingfors. Before dinner he took a bath and did a few exercises, patting the iron-grey hairs of his chest with satisfaction. Born of a people whose physique had been ruined by centuries of overcrowding in the ghettos, he was proud of his sturdy body. It was his offering to the race; he felt that it was a worthier offering than his sturdy character. His pride, he knew, was illogical, since he had acquired the character by self-discipline and had been presented with the body by his parents. On the other hand fine physique seemed to be the greatest need of his people; one champion boxer did more to raise their prestige than a dozen scientists and bankers. He wondered why this should be so, why the devil the Gentile world supposed that every Jew was endowed with a mysteriously brilliant intelligence at birth.

  He came down to the lounge with a fine appetite. In the centre of the room two Baltic-German commercial travellers grunted at each other over dry Martinis, their squat, shaven heads rolling over tight collars like two shapeless lumps of meat trussed up for cooking. In one corner a red-faced Lancashire manufacturer, pockets bulging with envelopes and coloured pencils, was wagging his forefinger at a much worried Finnish agent who obviously understood less than half the lecture. In the opposite corner a copy of the Times and two long legs sticking out from under it suggested that the occupant of the deep chair was Toby Manning. Bendrihem dropped into a chair alongside him.

  “Feeling rested?” Toby asked.

  “Splendid. And you?”

  “Walked myself into a good humour, and had a look at Hanson & Crane’s customers.”

  “At work already?”

  “Not seriously. I was just observing local tastes in the park. Battleships are the favourite of the young Finn, with fire engines a close second. Tell me—are Jewish little boys as bloody-minded in their playthings?”

  “I think so,” Bendrihem laughed. “Why?”

  “I wondered if there was just one people which had grown out of violence even in the cradle. Have a drink?”

  “Let’s go into the dining room and have a carafe of schnapps with smörgasbord.”

  “Good! I’m hungry too.”

  The hotel dining room was well sprinkled with English holiday makers and businessmen who had come up to enjoy the brief northern summer and take advantage of the new trade agreement. The two sat down at a table to which a long box of ferns gave an illusive air of privacy.

  “Violence,” said Bendrihem, “is common to children of all ages. I think a calm, unconscious conceit is as near as any nation has got to maturity up to the present. We in England think ourselves the head prefects of the world and consequently are very funny. But we aren’t dangerous to the community.”

  “All right. But aren’t France and Spain equally mature—and more modest.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know enough individuals of either country well enough. But I think the best type of Englishman is the most adult creature I know.”

  “What is the best type?” Toby asked.

  “I can’t define it. I know it when I see it—or rather when I have watched it a little while. There’s one sitting five tables behind you. Tall, fair, a little bald. Age—since he keeps his figure—indeterminate. He evidently thinks the hotel belongs to him, and gives and expects the same courtesy as in his own club. He’s perfectly happy to be alone, and doing himself uncommonly well.”

  Toby looked round.

  “
Good God! It’s the Reverend Mark!” he exclaimed.

  “You know him? A clergyman?”

  “Well! No, a chartered accountant. I say, this is splendid! Do you mind if he joins us?”

  “I should enjoy it.”

  Toby got up and walked the length of the dining room. Mark Ottery, concentrating brains and palate on the appreciation of his Kievsky cutlet, did not see him until his shadow fell across the plate.

  “Good Lord! My old friend Toby!”

  “How’s your reverence?”

  “Very venerable, Toby. I find that the more burgundy I drink after schnapps, the more venerable I get. Sit down!”

  “No. Come and join us. I’m with a friend.”

  “A woman, of course,” said Ottery gloomily.

  “A man.”

  “Can I be venerable with him?”

  “As venerable as you like. Come on.”

  “I have a dish of meat, Toby, a savoury dish of meat—the hinder part of a capon suspended in a void of butter. Let me finish it and I’m with you.”

  “A greedy reverence!”

  “I enjoy my food. Give me five minutes with the capon and I will come bearing burgundy in my hands. Who’s your friend?”

  “A chap called Bendrihem. A good fellow! We’re sitting over there among the greenery.”

  “He looks like a Jew.”

  “He is.”

  “Ha! I like a jovial Jew!” declared Mark Ottery. “They know how to enjoy themselves when they’re civilised. Is he a civilised Jew?”

  “I never knew one that wasn’t.”

  “An urbane Jew, Toby?”

  “That is rarer. But he is. Hurry up and finish that cutlet!”

  “All right.”

  Mark Ottery prepared to sit down again, then hesitated.

  “By God, I’m glad to see you, Toby!” he said. “I’m getting old and depressed. A clubman.”

  “I know the feeling,” Toby replied. “Achieved middle age. Come along and we’ll deal with it.”