Cards of Identity

by Nigel Dennis

  ‘He spent it all on good works, Mr Jellicoe. And most of mine, too. It costs a lot, to buy a sacred memory.’

  ‘I hope you have wisely invested what little his memory did not require.’

  ‘It goes on flowers for his grave.’

  ‘Was he buried nearby?’

  ‘No; in Nottingham. The florists have a weekly standing order.’

  ‘What a very expensive death! All I ask, after a life of sin and penance, is a plain slab with the name “Henry Jellicoe”. Not that I would seriously protest if some kind friend added just a word or two of explanation.’

  ‘I never knew your Christian name was Henry.’

  ‘Oh Lord, yes!’

  ‘For me, it has strong associations.’

  ‘I rather take it for granted. Its only association is with me.’

  ‘You think you are the only Henry in the world?’

  ‘I am the only Henry who means Henry to me.’

  ‘And to me, the only Henry who means Henry has ceased to be Henry.’

  There was a brisk knock on the door and Miss Tray burst in – all corduroy, leggings, flush, and excitement. ‘I have come to throw myself on your mercies!’ she cried. ‘Here is the situation. When I was a young girl – i.e. younger than I am now –’

  ‘Is this going to be a long story, Miss Tray?’ asked Mrs Paradise. ‘We are very busy.’

  ‘It’s terribly important. It will change my whole life. So I have to start it rather far back or you wouldn’t see why. When I was a young girl, i.e….’

  They looked her square in the face, as is the habit of listeners who have no intention of listening. Their minds were far away, turning over the mysteries of death, the Navy, and an occasional badger. From time to time, a stray word or phrase of Miss Tray’s stole into their minds through a back door which the breeze blew ajar and floated aimlessly above their thoughts like a feather over a crowded sink. In short, by the time they paid attention to Miss Tray, their only clues to her topic were, in Jellicoe’s case, the words ‘Royal Academy’ and ‘Imagine my grief’, and, in Mrs Paradise’s, ‘taxed to the utmost’ and ‘a poor sort of hero’. But many a listener has entered conversation, and even controversy, with much less.

  ‘At last,’ said Miss Tray, ‘my mother consented. I was enrolled. He was one of the teachers there, and it was he who taught me to enunciate Shakespeare.’

  ‘You were still in the Royal Academy then?’ said Jellicoe.

  ‘I am just entering it now,’ said Miss Tray.

  ‘That is what I meant. I was puzzled by the reference to Shakespeare.’

  ‘But that’s why it’s called the Royal Academy of Stagecraft, Mr Jellicoe.’

  ‘I agree that gives the matter another complexion.’

  ‘Neither of us,’ continued Miss Tray, ‘had much in the way of physique or voice. But he showed me how, by a sort of special agitation of the larynx, one can give an audience the feeling that they are living in a robust Elizabethan atmosphere. These were the loudest and happiest years of my life.’

  ‘It seems ungrateful, then,’ said Mrs Paradise, ‘to call him a poor sort of hero.’

  ‘Or to imagine your grief,’ said Jellicoe. ‘I think you were a most fortunate young woman.’

  ‘Others besides you were being taxed to the utmost,’ said Mrs Paradise.

  Miss Tray began to cry. ‘I thought I would find you more understanding,’ she sobbed.

  Mrs Paradise, touched, patted Miss Tray’s shoulder. ‘You will find us most understanding, dear,’ she said, ‘if you will only not get so emotional. Try and speak more clearly, more slowly, more frankly.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have grasped …’

  ‘We have grasped everything. Now, dry your eyes, dear, and go on.’

  ‘Promise me, though, that you favour the idea?’

  ‘It is all right in its way, but I am not quite sure that it is any concern of mine.’

  ‘But that’s what I’ve explained, isn’t it?’

  ‘I must say, at this point,’ said Jellicoe, ‘that all through those years, I was at sea.’

  ‘Mr Jellicoe!’ cried Miss Tray. ‘Why did you not say so before?’

  ‘He has said so repeatedly,’ said Mrs Paradise. ‘And in your hearing.’

  ‘I am ashamed,’ said Miss Tray. ‘I must have been wool-gathering.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said Jellicoe, ‘it was not my first intention. My parents never thought much of me; I was a diffused child. One day, they saw me floating matchboxes in a puddle. “Oho!” said my father, “so it’s water he likes, is it?” I didn’t like to say it was matchboxes. Next week, they bought me a sailor-suit and told all the neighbours. When I saw that suddenly everyone recognized me, I didn’t want to argue and become a stranger again. So I joined the Navy. On the other hand, my brother, who worshipped naval things, was somehow seen to be a chartered accountant.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Jellicoe had an honourable naval career,’ said Mrs Paradise. ‘He’s not easily influenced by heart-rending stories.’

  ‘But you said you would do it!’ cried Miss Tray.

  ‘I said nothing of the kind,’ said Mrs Paradise.

  ‘But I heard you say “Um”.’

  ‘You heard me say “Hm-m”.’

  ‘Then you won’t do it?’

  ‘I don’t say we definitely won’t,’ replied Mrs Paradise.

  ‘I can show you your parts this very evening. We’ll all have to take more than one, of course. I don’t know what Mrs Chirk will think.’

  She began to cry again.

  ‘Come, come, now,’ said Mrs Paradise, ‘you can be sure Mr Jellicoe and I will do our best for you. But you must try and speak more honestly.’

  ‘It makes it worse to know that Mr Jellicoe is an ex-seaman,’ sobbed Miss Tray, ‘because that’s the most important part. It needs a man who has felt the spray. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘I imagine we do,’ said Mrs Paradise.

  ‘And perhaps Mrs Chirk could help with the disguises.’

  ‘You would have to speak to her.’

  ‘There are one or two places where, if we are all two or more persons, we would find ourselves talking to ourselves, and in more than one disguise at that. But we can snip out the bits where things get too muddled. And the doctor has been so sweet about it. What’s more, he’s sure the other doctors are going to love it.’

  ‘You can’t always be sure with doctors,’ said Jellicoe.

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs Paradise. ‘In my own recent illness they were proved totally wrong.’

  ‘Nor do I see why you should suddenly be so full of doctoring, Miss Tray,’ said Jellicoe. ‘By nature, you are a jolly girl with few serious interests.’

  ‘That’s only my mask, Mr Jellicoe. Now that I have warmed to my theme, I am quite naked. The doctor is very pleased.’

  ‘What puzzles me,’ said Jellicoe, ‘is that you should find so many doctors available when the house is full of sportsmen. Perhaps some of them are vets.’

  ‘I think not,’ said Miss Tray. ‘It is exclusively a medical conference for people.’

  Here, Mrs Paradise gave Jellicoe a warning look, as if begging him not to press the poor girl. So Jellicoe, who had already noticed many odd things about Miss Tray’s picture of the real world, merely said tactfully: ‘Of course, the captain’s acquaintances cover a wide range of types.’

  ‘Then, you know the part, Mr Jellicoe?’ cried Miss Tray.

  ‘Hardly as well as I used to,’ he said carefully.

  ‘The title is so misleading, of course. The Prince is not the hero at all. The Captain is. I remember his explaining that to me once.’

  ‘Who explaining what to you?’ demanded Mrs Paradise.

  ‘The teacher I was so in love with.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘I must go about my duties,’ said Jellicoe, rising naturally. ‘Thanks to the badgers I shall have to carry up their tea. Miss Tray, Mrs Paradise will tell me what conclusion you r
each. I am sure I shall be in agreement.’

  ‘If you two say yes, then everything will hinge on Mrs Chirk,’ said Miss Tray.

  ‘It would seem so,’ said Jellicoe, leaving the room.

  ‘Perhaps you could persuade her, Mrs Paradise?’ said Miss Tray pleadingly. ‘You would do it so much better than me. If you will be both Hermione and the Queen, she can be the minor women and I can dress up as the man.’

  ‘This is all rather a surprise, Miss Tray.’

  ‘I know, but you do see the situation, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. But I’m not sure I like it any the better.’

  ‘Have you had any stage experience, Mrs Paradise?’

  ‘What do you mean – stage-experience?’

  ‘I mean, have you done it before?’

  ‘Yes and no. It all depended on the situation.’

  ‘But you have agreed, haven’t you? You’re not going to go back on your word.’

  ‘I don’t like being pushed, young lady.’

  ‘I’m not pushing, Mrs Paradise, I promise. That’s my natural expression. Oh, Mrs Paradise! Who will be the Queen if you change your mind?’

  ‘You want me to be a queen?’

  ‘The Queen. There’s only one. You have such poise, such dignity.’

  ‘You make it all sound like a play.’

  ‘But isn’t that exactly what it is?’

  ‘Certainly. I meant the excited way you were saying it … I can’t imagine what Mr Jellicoe is going to think. The stage won’t fit with his penance.’

  ‘But he’ll be the real hero. Mr Towzer can be the Prince.’

  ‘Well, on the whole I think you are a good-hearted girl, Miss Tray,’ said Mrs Paradise, giving her a hug. ‘And if you want us to become actors I suppose we can’t very well refuse. Mrs Chirk can start work on the Queen’s clothes immediately.’

  ‘Will she agree to be Radegund?’

  ‘Mrs Chirk will agree to be anyone, dear.’

  ‘Or I could be Radegund, and she Catriona.’

  ‘As long as she is told clearly, that is all she asks.’

  ‘There is something I feel I should confess to you, Mrs Paradise. Not everything I said at the beginning was quite true. About my life and that man.’

  ‘You needn’t tell me that, dear. My instinct told me at once.’

  ‘But it was a white He, wasn’t it? The truth is that the play is going to be an act of occupational therapy for Mr Towzer.’

  ‘That is pretty much what I guessed.’

  ‘But it was a white lie, wasn’t it?’

  ‘White or black, you run along now. This has been a most peculiar afternoon for me. Everything has seemed out of place. What with badgers above and plays below, and poor Mrs Chirk in a perpetual flutter, and Mr Jellicoe doing all that arithmetic, and my memories…! Dear me! Sometimes one wonders who one is.’

  ‘That’s what The Prince of Antioch says, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s the prince of what?’

  ‘The title of our play, Mrs Paradise.’

  ‘Don’t shout, dear; I know that.’

  ‘It will do me good, too, Mrs Paradise. It will force me closer to reality. If Mrs Chirk plays Radegund, I shall view my mother quite differently. Which is what the doctor ordered.’

  ‘If that’s your aim, dear, why not let Mrs Chirk take one of the male parts?’

  ‘Mrs Paradise!’ cried Miss Tray: ‘what a simply wonderful idea! But would it work? I already have a father, you see, in the doctor.’

  ‘She could be like a brother.’

  ‘Too risky, dear Mrs Paradise. We are not playing Antigone. And my movement must be away, not to.’

  ‘Please yourself. Only make up your mind. Mrs Chirk is willing, but she cannot bear suspense.’

  *

  Midnight found the captain still at work. He had made the rounds of the big house, encouraging Mrs Paradise and Mrs Chirk with a kind word, Jellicoe with a sharp reproach. Now, dressed in his pyjamas and gold-tasselled dressing-gown, genuinely smoking his curved pipe, he sat quietly in his tower-bedroom, examining committee reports and looking exactly what he was – a well-dressed adjutant off duty.

  The door opened and the President entered. He, too, was in pyjamas and dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, but all of a sloppy, ill-fitting, presidential kind, like an old windmill.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you, Mallet,’ he said, ‘but I would like your opinion. Do you feel the Club has settled down?’

  ‘Why, sir, as well as clubs ever do.’

  ‘You sense no restlessness? No mystery? Why is Shubunkin in Musk’s bedroom? Why is Orfe giving syrup to Bitterling for laryngitis? Why has Harris promised to read-over Jamesworth’s statistics on the domestic accident-rate?’

  ‘Why, sir, surely such connivances are an everyday thing in a president’s life?’

  ‘You don’t think they are plotting against me?’

  ‘They have only themselves and you, sir, to plot against. It could hardly be otherwise, could it?’

  ‘It should be one another they detest. Particularly after that lick of discipline I gave them this afternoon.’

  ‘It seems to have boomeranged, sir.’

  ‘Was I to know that Bitterling would lose his voice? I meant him to be an instrument of punishment. He has become an object of sympathy. Why? I have used the second-reading technique of discipline for years: never before has the speaker’s larynx exploded in my face. Why has it suddenly changed from an interminable trumpet to a broken reed? We can rule out immediately the notion that it was a physical collapse. We can also rule out, as absurd, the notion that a man like Bitterling would want to be left speechless.’

  ‘What, then, do you conclude, sir?’

  ‘Why, that it is all a plot. They are trying to force me out. What is a larynx? It is that which speaks. What am I? I am the Club spokesman. Therefore, a shut larynx is an impotent president. Why, it’s clear as text-book. Bitterling is but the bearer of die hostile message – a reed, a pipe, a mere Hermes.’

  ‘It is not to be denied, sir. I had reached precisely that conclusion.’

  ‘My only hope is that the plotters are not yet conscious of their plot. It has shaped itself deep down in the subterranean darkness of their despicable psyches. Like hot air rising, it will endeavour to struggle to the surface. Its creators will do their utmost to keep it down – quite unconsciously, of course – in order to avoid guilt. If it is too strong for them and pokes its periscope above the surface, they will hasten to disguise it as something inoffensive – say, a jar of marmalade. That will be my opportunity. Fully conscious of what I am doing, I shall throw a disguise of my own over their disguise. That will fox them.’

  ‘What kind of disguise, sir?’

  ‘The text-book one. I shall accuse them of attacking me. They will then conclude that though I was the overt object of their hostility, Bitterling was really the man they were out to get. I am sorry to have to sacrifice Bitterling, but the Club needs me much more than it needs him.’

  ‘Of course, sir, a session invariably releases the worst in them.’

  ‘A stab in the back will release the best in me.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, sir; it is not a thing to be objective about.’

  ‘I would enjoy it in a case-history, you understand? On paper, I have no objection whatever to these infinitely-concealed manifestations of unconsciousness travelling up and down from bargain-basement to attic with surreptitious stops on all floors. It does the boys good to have so many buttons to press and to keep poor Mr X floating up and down on his greasy cables. But I flatly refuse to become personally involved – to let myself be included as their victim. Once agree to be Mr X today and tomorrow you become X marks the spot … What puzzles me is why they should be behaving so badly?’

  ‘Obviously, sir, they are in need of authority.’

  ‘Am I not supplying it? Am I not an absolute image of authority? Could I be more a president?’

  ‘Sir, I well rememb
er your predecessor….’

  ‘What! Poor old Planorbis? My good Mallet, you are not comparing me to him? Why, he was utterly decrepit, totally broken-down! He had the manner of a president to the last, but he was a mere shell, Mallet, a husk, nonentity in presidential disguise. But I – I am in my prime, a bare seventy-five years old. For twenty years I have piqued them, squashed them, resurrected them, at will. I have dumbfounded them with my intuitions, sat on them with my logic. Where their interpretations of human behaviour have been ingenious, mine have been labyrinthal. Often, I have penetrated so far behind the scenes that they have never expected me to re-emerge. As to the great theory, no sooner has the smallest leak appeared than my thumb has stopped it. I have urged-on the younger members, showered undeserved congratulations on the older ones. They have laid a thousand traps for me and I have not only escaped every one but trounced their setters. Is this leadership or is it not? Could more be asked of authority?’

  ‘Only that it be recognized, sir.’

  ‘But they cannot help recognizing it, Mallet. It is indisputably there. I am every inch a president … Come now, you yourself are a man of presidential timber. Is there any doubt in your mind as to the reality of my identity?’

  ‘Sir, it is not for me to doubt. I am a loyal officer.’

  ‘Oh, Mallet, this is no time for scruples! You need only answer my question.’

  ‘Sir, I am not a flexible type, except in dealing with patients. It would undermine me absolutely.’

  ‘Oh, very well! I shall go and do some more spying. Do you know that Orfe is getting his whisky from Jellicoe?’

  ‘It would be in the tradition of these great houses, sir.’

  ‘Give me the old Club premises any day. I shall be thankful when all this junketing is over. The very keyholes give me earache.’

  He opened the door cautiously. As he closed it behind him a segment of his dressing-gown, faded and full of moth-holes, remained in its clasp. There was a sharp tearing sound as the President padded away without it.

  Beaufort picked it up a few minutes later when he opened the door. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I say, what’s this?’

  ‘A piece of the President’s dressing-gown,’ said the captain.

  ‘Is it a symblem or an embol? Does it mean he has cast his mantle upon your shoulders? Is he afraid you may step in a puddle? And all those moth-holes. I expect they token a parting of the ways.’