Testimonies

by Patrick O'Brian

  I had nothing concrete to go on, no downright rudeness. It was just a strong and general feeling of unfriendliness. Before, it had taken me a quarter of an hour to buy a stamp at the post office, with the necessary talk and interchange; I had thought it a bore sometimes, but now I had my stamp directly. I missed it: I was worried and disorientated.

  I was walking about a good deal now, not far, but out every day. On one walk I passed by the small farm just by the village. They had come to see me while I was ill so I did not like to pass the door. I knocked and the woman came to the door: the closed, hard expression on her face drove away my smile. She stood in the door and said that her husband was not at home.

  I owe this to Ellis and his good offices, I said as I walked away. I told myself that I should wear it out, or if I did not it could not matter very much: my life had been enclosed and it could be again. If the good opinion of a few odd acquaintances among the farming people was so easily lost it was not of great value. It was sad, though; and I felt it more than I would own at that time.

  On my way I met the old woman who had come to do the housework at Hafod: she was an odd figure, with a battered hat perched on her head and a great faggot of brushwood on her back. Without meaning it I had offended her in the past, and although she appeared to bear no malice I intended just to bid her good day and pass by. But she put down her faggot with a grunt and stopped me. “Is sweating, Mr. Pugh,” she said, wiping her dirty old face.

  “You have a heavy load, Mrs. Bowen,” I replied, or something like that. She sat on the bundle and launched into an account of a sack of potatoes that she, or someone else, had carried from one place to another, a great distance, many years ago. I lost the thread very soon. I could never tell whether The damned Thing referred to the sack, her late husband, or some unidentified person in the tale: anyhow, she seemed to have left the original story for that of a parcel from Swansea that was lost in a bus. It was despairing, nervous work listening to her, but I did try to concentrate this time, because I could feel a desire on her part to be friendly—it came through the confusion somehow.

  She stopped eventually, from hoarseness, and we said good-by. She pressed my elbow as we parted, and said, “The damned thing, eh?” with an affectionate nod. I wondered what it was as I walked up the hill; there had been references to people in the valley and at Gelli in the later part of her speech. But there was no knowing.

  I walked into the kitchen, and Nain was sitting there. It was rare to see any of them sitting and I was going to make some facetious remark when I saw to my horror that she was crying. There was something infinitely pathetic in her frailty, and the brave way she held up her head, disguising it. She wore spectacles; they were always perched on her nose, balancing: the tears gleamed behind them. I feigned not to notice, muttered something, and went quickly to my room.

  It was in the course of these days that I noticed a new change in the relations between Nain and Bronwen. I was watching, trying to fathom the cause of all this. They did not quarrel now: it was not exactly quarreling before, but there had been sharp words. Now they spoke rarely, from a distance: it might have been indifference, but it was not, and it was not good-will.

  Dear Lord, it was sad, sad: in that odd little room I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, trying to think clearly. How can you think when you have no clear line to follow? Your head is full of confused dark conjectures; ideas start wildly and end in no conclusion. For me, I found that the habit of logical thought abdicated with hardly a struggle and gave place to melancholy, vague apprehension and worry.

  Skinner came up to see me. He had been away for the winter and had come back for a few days before going on to Sweden. He had only just heard that I had been ill. We were very stiff at first and found it difficult to resume our conversation at anything like the pitch it had reached before that unfortunate evening with the Lost Tribes. It must have cost Skinner a lot to come up: he was shy, proud and offended—I honored him for it and doubted whether I should have done as much in his place. I felt very much that I should like to talk pleasantly to him, but it seemed that he could not settle or be easy. We could find nothing to say after the stock of civil inquiries had run out. I worked hard to flog the conversation along, and it was hard work, because I was feeling dull and heavy. The pauses grew more frequent and the topics I dragged up became more and more forced and artificial. I wished he would go away; he had already stayed much longer than was usual for such a visit. But he would not go, and in the end I found out why. After beating about the bush for a good half hour he made a closely qualified statement about the danger and impertinence of meddling. Then, opening and closing his hands as he spoke, and speaking in a hard, formal voice, he said, “I am perfectly well prepared to be told to mind my own business and to be shown the door. I have no wish to interfere with your concerns, Pugh, but they are funny people here and I want to say that you ought to look out for yourself.” With that he got up and went straight out of the house.

  I was amazed, literally amazed: I did not even have the presence of mind to ask him what he meant (not that he would have said) or even to wish him good-by. I stood gaping at the closed door like a fool.

  “What the devil is the good of saying a thing like that if you are not going to amplify it?” I said, sitting down again.

  He must have thought that I knew what he was talking about, otherwise what he said had no sense. Perhaps it did have no sense. Perhaps by now he had gone off his head thoroughly; he said he had taken to spiritualism, and that the congress he was going to attend in Sweden was a gathering of spiritualists. He had behaved oddly all the time, and his last remarks had been delivered in a high state of nervous tension—unbalanced, surely?

  If it had not been for the behavior of the villagers I should have let it slip from my mind in five minutes as one of Skinner’s eccentricities (his house was wired and double-wired against burglars, and the garden was an ironmonger’s shop full of patent alarms).

  The circumstances being what they were I thought about it for a long time. In the end I thought that I had reached the truth of it: the unfriendliness was the result of Ellis’ enmity; for a man in his position nothing could have been easier than to point me out as a scoffer, an unbeliever—anything that required no proof but his opinion. That was one matter: Skinner’s warning was another. Someone had talked about this legacy; they might possibly have done that, though they would never have mentioned the investment. The story had run about and had reached Skinner, probably distorted, and he, with his morbid preoccupation with crime and his fanatical attitude toward the Welsh, had instantly concluded that I was in danger of being murdered for my money. Such things have happened, especially in families, and he had probably heard of such a case. It was very decent indeed in him to come up as he had, but what a curious lack of proportion to suppose such a thing in these circumstances. I wondered whether he had ever met Taid or Emyr. It was a satisfactory conclusion.

  Both Taid and Emyr came into the yard just then; I heard the ring of their boots and went out to ask them to help me to bring my gramophone down. I had long had it in mind and I had put it off so long only because the machine had a delicate sound-box and horn, and I did not want anyone else to break them: if they were to be broken it would be much better if I did it. I had been longing for music these last days, and now I hoped that it would change my mood for me. I also wanted to see what their reactions would be: there was the national reputation for music, and from what I had learned myself at first hand it was justified. The only time I had been in the dreadful chapel in the village was for an eisteddfod, and I had been deeply impressed by the beauty of the singing in the body of the hall—it was an informal eisteddfod and the audience sang hymns from time to time. I remember, also, the striking contrast between the raw ugliness of that place and the beauty of the voices. It was strange, that partial vision.

  We brought the things down, and after supper I proposed a concert. I had chosen my records carefully;
I intended to start with the Kleine Nachtmusik, to go on to the oboe quartet and perhaps to finish with the fifth Brandenburg. They were all things with an instant appeal; or so I had supposed.

  They listened politely. The old lady took off her spectacles with a droll, unconscious air of correctness. But I had not turned the first record before I realized that it was no use: they did not hear the music at all, and it was only good manners that kept them in their attentive attitudes. Poor Bronwen: she was far away in some unhappy thoughts of her own. I could not divine them, but it fairly tore my heart to see her, and her sudden attention and interested smile when the record came to an end. I tried a little longer, then gave up and played what few choral pieces I had: that was different, and before the end I had the pleasure of seeing the old man perfectly entranced at a choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus. It may have reached Bronwen, but I do not think it did; she was not far from tears, and when it was finished she went quickly from the room.

  It was strange that it should have been like that; but there it was; the fact was obvious and I had to accept it.

  That night, with the gramophone in my room, I played over the records that I hoped would purge my sadness. If you put your finger-nail in the sound-track of a revolving record it will play just loud enough for you to hear, with your head bent to your hand. It must be known music, so that memory will supply the phrases that do not come through, or come distorted.

  I went on hour after hour. I was far down in the solemn heart-break of the Bach double concerto when I heard a noise in the house. It was a scuffling sound and a thud. I thought I heard a stifled cry: then silence. I was transfixed, squatting there by the machine, listening above the faint whirr of the engine. It turned and turned, ran down slower and slower, and stopped with a little grinding sound. It is easy to start explaining away a noise in the dark. After you have been explaining it for some time you begin to doubt its reality in the first place and it grows insubstantial.

  But then in the utter stillness I heard a sobbing, sobbing stifled and kept down, but hopeless, hopeless sobbing that would never stop.

  Gray and silent, that is sadness. This was tearing, bitter, so shockingly painful it filled the house; far, far beyond sadness.

  All night in that damned chair, with the unfeeling light of the moon: wild, mad schemes tearing through my head in a nightmare, and somewhere in the house that hopeless sobbing, just audible, irregular, killing with pain.

  One moment I was on my feet, a Samson and a Hercules, then back in my chair, my rack, whining What can I do, what can I do. What did I do that night long, the only time in my life when I could have been some use? The night long with my love breaking in agony? Nothing. Sat there biting my nails, and sniveled.

  I slept some time after the dawn had come in. There are some men who sleep before they are to be hanged. They have to be shaken awake and told to get ready.

  Nain brought in my breakfast. I could not talk to her; there were her manners and her deference: an impenetrable wall. I did not come out of my room until nearly twelve. I had heard them in the kitchen. As I opened my door Emyr came in by the outside door: I could not see his face—the sun was behind him—but he was bowed like an old man. I heard Bronwen’s voice, low and hard, say, “Out,” the word they use to dogs in Welsh; he hesitated, and went, stumbling.

  She was standing with her hands on the table. It was another woman there: her face was gray—gray, no color even in her lips, and her enormous eyes were ringed dark. The old people were huddled over by the fire and the child with them. They were frightened. I was still in the bit of passage and as I looked at her I knew what he had done.

  When she saw me she smiled, and a human look came into her face.

  I stuttered out something about going for a walk, not being hungry. She nodded; there was all of her there. I was to follow her. In the little pantry she cut bread, food wrapped in a paper, and at the door she put her hand on my arm and said, “It will be all right.”

  I was at the top of Cwm Erchyll, in the dark haunted valley. At one time I must have been deep in the mud of the bog, for it was black and caking on my jacket. Up there there were no clouds, the huge sky and calm: I walked over to where Carnedd and Y Brenin point up, black triangles. They are higher than me; and below was the lake—an easy death down there, the rocks so jagged and the clear air below. But I was not an ineffectual man any more. I had strength too. There were two ravens below me, wheeling in the emptiness, but I had strength now and for me it was clear, plain, no madness or ranting.

  The mountains and soft grass, I crossed the mountains and the soft grass. The lake, I passed that, and the dam. The path now: I was stumbling, lurching with tiredness: stupid with exhaustion I fell—blood somewhere—that quenches your towering fire, and there are hours to go.

  It is hard for a man to outrun his body, and train it over twenty miles of mountain, sick at that.

  I was talking: you do when you are so beat. Here is the corner; see the good bank of fern. You can kneel down in that and then on all fours you can retch your heart out; you will go better without it. Come on my hero, you have better to do than that, with the long shale ahead. The counties of England; Monmouth and Wales: Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught; and the States of America.

  Then doggerel, any sort, in hope of a rhythm for my feet. Never no never no never again: never no never no never again. Never no never no never again.

  The ruined sheep-pen and the river. You fall: it is shallow, is another fall important?

  They have lit the lamps and from this distance (it is a mile and a half exactly on the Ordnance Survey) there is the usual effect of dancing lights. That comes with fatigue: it can be controlled with resolution. That is the mark, is it not? The effectual man is resolute.

  An hour more up there staring over to Carnedd and you would have lain out the night on the mountain.

  This is the cart track and level: the rhythm of movement is so important; it will get you there, you know. Never no never no never again never no never no never again.

  Yes. The dogs. The door is in front.

  In the kitchen there was a ghastly pretense of normality. She was in bed: Emyr had brought the doctor. He had said she must go to bed. It was the nerves.

  Yes, I said, I had fallen in the water. It was of no consequence. I was going to change. Yes, it was late.

  It is hard for a man to outrun his body. It will lie there and not train after him any more then, in the end. I was unconscious across my bed because I had sat for five minutes to gather that famous strength I had found up there, and my resolution.

  So I was asleep and in the next day they woke me and the people who woke me were the people who had come hurrying to see her dead.

  Copyright © 1952 by Patrick O’Brian.

  Copyright renewed © 1980 by Patrick O’Brian.

  First Norton edition 1992.

  First published as a Norton paperback 1995.

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  The text of this book is composed in 11 /15 New Baskerville, with the display set in Bernhard Modern Roman.

  Composition and manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.

  Book design by Jo Anne Metsch.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Brian Patrick, 1914–Testimonies / Patrick O’Brian.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PR6029.B55T47 1993

  823’.914—dc20 92-27426

  eISBN 9780393344431

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