Cards of Identity

by Nigel Dennis

  Miss Paradise gave an approving grunt. Rivers of tears, explosions of love; this was life as it should be. ‘He brought me tea on a silver tray,’ she said, giving Mrs Mallet a shrewd look.

  ‘You even remember that, Florence? But that’s wonderful.’

  ‘I remember everything,’ said Miss Paradise boastfully.

  ‘Everything, Florence?’

  ‘Why not? I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  ‘But Florence, dear, the doctor said it might be weeks before your poor mind began to grasp things again.’

  ‘Doctors! What do they know?’

  ‘Do you remember the old lawyer who tried to be so sweet to you?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And how we fetched you from the lodge?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘You know we didn’t mean to be unkind?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, you are a marvel, Florence. But then, of course, you stood up to everything so wonderfully at the time that nothing about you can surprise me any more. I think that if they hadn’t pushed you just a bit too far by reading the will you would never have collapsed at all.’

  ‘That’s just what I think,’ said Miss Paradise in a resentful voice, not minding her perplexity so much, however, on learning that another was responsible for it.

  ‘The captain understood at once. “A brave soul,” he said to me afterwards, “can endure any loss without flinching. What brings its collapse is to learn that, as a result of loss, it has obtained material gain.”’

  ‘Henry’s gone, hasn’t he?’ asked Miss Paradise suddenly.

  ‘That’s what I meant, Florence, dear. The thought of benefiting by his going …’

  A hammering began in Miss Paradise’s chest. She would have liked, without knowing why, to burst into tears, tears of mingled loss and ignorance. But, having proudly laid claim to perfect remembrance, she could not bear the thought of renouncing it. And as she lay, tormented by sadness, curiosity, and conceit, there was a light tap on the door and a boyish, handsome face popped through.

  ‘Beau! You are a naughty boy!’ said Mrs Mallet sharply.

  ‘I simply had to come,’ he answered simply, and crossing the room with quick steps he bestowed on Miss Paradise the sweetest, most loving smile she had ever received. Then, bending down, he slipped one arm under her neck, gave her a passionate buss on each cheek, and muttered: ‘Hurry up and get well, Florrie-Porrie! This old barn is like the grave, without the sound of your keys.’

  ‘Beaufort,’ said Mrs Mallet, biting her lips at his tactless mention of the grave.

  But he was out of the room immediately: the two women heard his footsteps running quickly down the passage.

  ‘Poor boy!’ said Miss Paradise in a gratified tone. ‘His eyes are full of tears.’ What pleased her about her situation was that although she couldn’t understand it, it was so sensible and right. Her feelings of loss were matched at every point by all manner of reward: certainly, she never remembered being loved so much by everyone. And as she had always believed she was the most lovable of women, the present situation, however puzzling, seemed to fit her so well that she was in no mood to question it.

  ‘May I come in?’ said a gruff, gentle voice, and there stood the father, power and tenderness struggling for mastery in his face. ‘Dear, brave Florence!’ he said, standing back simply and surveying her with awe. ‘What a character! What a soul! What a lesson!’

  ‘And she remembers everything,’ said Mrs Mallet.

  The captain was astounded. He exclaimed: ‘But the doctor said …’

  At this, Mrs Mallet and Miss Paradise looked at each other and began to laugh. Their amusement perplexed the captain: he scratched his head and walked up and down like a clumsy puppy, muttering: ‘But, bless my soul … I don’t see … Really, it doesn’t seem …’

  ‘Florence and I have talked it all over, dear,’ said Mrs Mallet, touching his arm. ‘We have decided that doctors don’t know everything. There is nothing more to say.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Miss Paradise.

  ‘Then … then, what happens next?’ blurted out the captain, bereft of all his normal poise and command.

  ‘Why, dear, we wait patiently now for our splendid Florence to get on her feet again.’

  ‘And that won’t be as long as you think,’ said Miss Paradise, remembering suddenly that she had feet and studying with interest the bump they made under the blankets.

  ‘Well, by Jove, then, I simply don’t know what to say,’ the captain confessed. ‘I have never known anything like it in my life.’ Suddenly, unable to restrain himself, he said furiously: ‘We’ve filled that devilish crater up, Florence: yes, by God, we have! It will never claim another life.’

  ‘You are opening old wounds!’ cried Mrs Mallet. ‘See, now, you’ve made her cry! Oh, you tactless men! I wish you would all go away.’

  Miss Paradise now wept freely for Henry, the more freely because she could hold the captain responsible for her weakness. Fixing her eyes on Henry’s photograph, she not only wept for his dear memory but out of a vague feeling that, though dead, he had somehow not gone in the way she had supposed. ‘We know where he is!’ she exclaimed aloud.

  ‘We do indeed,’ said the captain loudly. ‘Where all men are when they have fought the good fight!’

  ‘I hardly know how I will look after myself, alone,’ said Miss Paradise.

  ‘You will never be alone, Florence,’ said Mrs Mallet: ‘not with three people who love you as we love you.’

  ‘But I am destitute!’ cried Miss Paradise, suddenly recalling a word that had been eluding her.

  ‘Oh, no, Florence!’ boomed the captain in distress. ‘He has left you everything, the savings of a lifetime! It is a considerable nest-egg.’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’ said Mrs Mallet very crossly, ‘if you cannot understand better, do leave the room! It was spiritual destitution that was meant.’

  ‘He meant it kindly, madam,’ said Miss Paradise, and wondered what on earth had made her say ‘madam’. She added: ‘Do you know, I thought I saw him again? Carrying a silver tray.’

  ‘Was that when the will was being read, Florence?’ asked Mrs Mallet. ‘In the breakfast-room, in the morning? After we had brought you from the lodge in the car?’

  ‘Yes, it was then.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the captain, pacing the floor: ‘Sometimes we think we see them. And we ask them: “Who are you, vision of one whom I loved?” And they can vouchsafe us no answer, since they are not walking before us but are in our mind’s eye. They carry a silver tray: it bears the hearts of those they have left behind. They are taking these hearts away for ever.’

  This sounded reasonable enough to Miss Paradise, so she went on crying quietly, shoring up the image of her disappearing heart with a picture of a nest full of speckled eggs. ‘Good, good Henry,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t a wicked man at all.’

  ‘He was one of the best,’ said the captain. ‘That, doubtless, is why he has been taken. Or so they tell us, anyway.’

  ‘I think Florence has had enough for this morning,’ said Mrs Mallet, rising and drawing the curtain again. ‘I shall go and make her some soup. All the maids have gone, Florence, in a sudden panic.’

  ‘Well, bless my soul!’ exclaimed the captain indignantly. ‘You accuse me of tactlessness and then you say the one thing that you know will upset Florence beyond everything!’

  ‘No, sir, I am proud to hear it!’ said Miss Paradise truthfully.

  ‘Of course you are, Florence,’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘You know there is more in you than in the whole tribe of men.’

  ‘Even sturdy little Agnes went,’ said the captain ruefully. ‘But you, Florence, always said she would.’

  ‘Indeed, I did,’

  ‘The older I get, the less I seem to know,’ said the captain in a resigned voice. In the half-darkness he took Miss Paradise’s hand and said gently: ‘I shall go now, Florence. Words cannot express my admiration. The da
y you again take your seat at the helm of our household will be one of the happiest we have ever known.’

  ‘But I have never been anyone’s housekeeper!’ cried Miss Paradise with resentment.

  ‘She has forgotten her promotion,’ said the captain, drawing the curtain open again and smiling proudly at Miss Paradise. ‘How proper for the humble heart, to recall everything except a matter for pride!’

  But Miss Paradise no longer was sure that she wanted further contact with this strange new world. She had no wish to deny her familiarity with it: puzzled though she was, she had already decided that she must have been on intimate terms with these affectionate people for many years. But now, following so many elevating compliments, she was being told that she had come down in the world, and this did not please her at all.

  ‘Florence, you remember old Mrs Jellicoe, don’t you?’ asked Mrs Mallet.

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘Jellicoe’s wife.’

  ‘Jellicoe’s mother, that’s right. Who was so sweet to you when you first came, when Beau was a little boy.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I remember everything.’

  ‘Well, then don’t you remember stepping into her shoes a few months ago, and how naughty you were and kept saying you didn’t want a rise in salary …?’

  ‘But we insisted,’ said the captain, ‘and we carried the day.’

  ‘I don’t know that it happened quite in that way,’ said Miss Paradise gloomily.

  ‘I think I can explain the uncertainty,’ said the captain. ‘In the violent upheaval that poor Florence has experienced, many fragments of her past have been dislodged. She remembers all the pieces, but she cannot be too sure where they fit. This is not her fault: it is because she remembers them, one might say, with such a marvellous brilliance, that a shadow is thrown by the substance upon its relevant position.’

  ‘You will exhaust the tired mind with such conundrums,’ said Mrs Mallet.

  ‘Madam, I understand perfectly,’ said Miss Paradise.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said the captain. ‘Now, what has happened is that, in the general confusion, the bottom has been put in the place of the top. Florence knows that her self has undergone a recent change of position; but whereas she has in fact been raised up in the order of things, she feels, on the contrary, that she has been cast down. This is something that only happens to very modest people; for modesty, always yearning towards humble things, never feels more humiliated, as it were, than at the moment when it is lifted up. You, Florence, you who have experienced this paradox, think you are not worthy of your new station. Nor are you, of course – in your own incomparable eyes. But in our eyes, my wife’s and mine, which dwell in a region so far inferior to yours, not only are you supremely adequate to the role of housekeeper but, indeed, fitted for far, far higher things – if such there be. That you should choose to serve us when your soul is as far above us as the stars – this has always puzzled us and always will. All we can say is that, for our part, we believe you have given us the privilege of serving you.’

  This was not Miss Paradise’s idea of the relation between employer and servant, but she did not object to its being held by employers. Moreover, the captain’s description of her selfless character was not one which any sane woman would deny. Apparently, over her strongest, most-ethical resistance, she had been promoted, given more salary and left a nest-egg. This in itself was reward enough, but what made it even better was the fact that to the reward was added a sensitive recognition of elements in her that others, so far as she could recall, had overlooked. All she had lost, it seemed, was Henry, and she could shed tears for Henry. She began to do so, murmuring: ‘He was a good man, wasn’t he?’

  ‘No woman ever had a better husband, Florence, as you yourself often remarked,’ said Mrs Mallet.

  Husband? This was a shock, but a pleasant one. So he had been her husband; then she must give him more tears, tears of even greater intimacy. She fixed her eyes on his photograph and marvelled at the sight of him – so trim, so debonair, so priceless a husband. ‘He loved horses,’ she said.

  ‘He loved everything, especially people,’ said the captain,

  ‘But you came first,’ said Mrs Mallet.

  Who was the man in the photograph with her husband? A troublesome memory began to spin in her mind but she had no wish to whip it up: the situation was already so right and complete. She felt every inch a saintly widow, inspired by tragedy, ethics, love, and capital. ‘Well, well,’ she said with a sigh and a smile, ‘I think I am better now.’

  ‘Ready for another good sleep,’ said Mrs Mallet, smiling.

  *

  The captain and Mrs Mallet descended to the breakfast-room, where Beaufort joined them immediately, asking: ‘Well, all ship-shape?’

  ‘Most satisfactory,’ said the captain, collapsing onto the sofa. ‘We left her snoring like a pig. But how my oratory has exhausted me! Open The Times and lay it over my face like a good boy.’

  Beaufort obeyed, and then came up behind Mrs Mallet, who was leaning back in a chair, and gently turned up her face. He kissed her lips and murmured: ‘And you, my darling stepmother? Has oratory dulled your tiny tongue? Do you love your handsome stepson?’

  ‘You little beast!’ she said, letting out a sigh of exhaustion and turning her lips away, ‘I suppose while we were slaving away at that harridan you were jazzing about in the car.’

  ‘I got up much earlier than either of you,’ answered Beaufort, closing Mrs Mallet’s eyes and rubbing them gently with his thumbs. ‘When I came bursting in to buss our Florrie I was straight from a good morning’s work.’

  ‘Was it really good?’ asked the captain, his voice hollowed by newspaper.

  ‘Sheer joy,’ replied Beaufort, removing his thumbs and kissing Mrs Mallet slowly, first on one eye then the other.

  ‘Stop it at once, please!’ cried the captain from below his canopy. ‘What would Jellicoe think, may I ask, if he came in and found my son making love to my wife?’

  ‘I don’t know why you should be so exhausted,’ said Beaufort. ‘She was not very difficult, and you said that her brother had been quite an easy job.’

  ‘I did,’ said the captain, sliding The Times down. ‘It was having to sit up so late with him that tired me. And, as always, it was only when the last nail had been driven home that I realized how much my arm ached. His character was not strong, but he had been using it for along time. It was quite rusted on to him. Why he wanted this identity so much, I cannot imagine. It was two a.m. before I convinced him that it was entirely his own invention.’

  ‘I hope you have supplied him with a rich, full past,’ said Mrs Mallet.

  ‘Everything a respectable steward could want. As a lad, I decided, he ran away to sea. Twenty years of drink and women followed in all parts of the world. Now, at last, he is going straight and though we cannot quite assure him that he will ever atone for his sins we can at least assure him that he is no longer trying to escape reality.’

  ‘Has he been with us for long?’

  ‘A good many years. He came straight here from the Navy. I found him, dead-drunk, in a Portsmouth gutter.’

  ‘I suppose he is still dreadfully ashamed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be? He owes me a debt he can never repay.’

  ‘Does he still drink?’

  ‘We stumble on him sometimes taking a secret pull.’

  ‘He took well to a watery past, did he?’ asked Beaufort.

  ‘He couldn’t resist it. The internal struggle of it all fascinated him. I mean, the long healthy hours at sea, followed by the revolting excesses of shore-leave.’

  ‘And he likes his name?’

  ‘He took to it immediately. Would you care to construe?’

  ‘I should love to. We begin with the premise that every butler believes he was born to command a fleet.’

  ‘That is correct. Go on.’

  ‘But Nelson, you felt, was too common a name. Howe and Hood might be a pair of fishmonger
s; Anson and Camperdown are excellent names, but can one be sure that they suggest admiralcy nowadays? I am sure you thought of Beatty, but decided it was too rowdy for a butler. The same of Mountbatten. But in Jellicoe you found everything – a bellicose, echoing, challenging suggestion discreetly balanced by an opening syllable indicative of a nature congealed and wobbly. In short, though he is for ever partly something pink, shaking guiltily on a plate, he has, in whole, the stuff of leadership.’

  ‘That is first-class, Beaufort. Thus it was, exactly. Incidentally, it may interest you to know that at first I toyed with the idea of an identity from the race-course. But when I put out a few racy feelers, he shrank in horror. That is an important thing to know, by the way. Never, except in rare cases, build on the existing disguise. Imagine the horror of this wretched man if I had taken up his crop and cord breeches and named him Donoghue.’

  ‘And too Irish,’ murmured Mrs Mallet sleepily. ‘Not the streak we want here at the moment, with so much to do.’

  ‘While we are on the name matter,’ said the captain, ‘here is a résumé of our attitudes. First, Mrs Paradise. The hideous abbreviation “Florrie” may safely be used by you two, on account of your being creatures of tenderness, jollity, and enthusiasm. To me, however, as master of the house, she must always be Florence, no matter how deep my feeling for her may be. The reason for this double-approach is that while Florence is fraught with grave, inhibitory influence, Florrie is suggestive of loose hair and even misappropriation. Thus, it will be for me, as it were, to suppress her rogue instincts with Florence, and for you two periodically to detonate the overcharged cannon with sparks of Florrie. It is a simple matter of balance, and if she shows signs of getting out of hand, you two can always start sticking in a few restorative Florences…. Now, her brother. He is to be Jellicoe at all times to all three of us: his is not a name to conjure with. To make Jelly out of it, for instance, would be fatal. It must always be uttered gravely and deliberately – dwelt upon, even: in short, treated as the outward and audible form of his inward and spiritual grace. It must be remembered that he has spent his whole life in the role of an unscrupulous steward, just as his sister has always been a receiver of stolen goods. Since his was the more active role, we cannot afford to relax our nominal pressure for one moment, though in her case we can safely give her the illusion of being human as well as honest. This, I must say,’ concluded the captain, ‘is a great deal more than most people have nowadays.’