by Tim Jeal
‘He’s right,’ murmured Magnus, surprised that his father did not seem disturbed.
‘I read your evidence to the commission and can’t say I blame you; though it’s a pity to lose so many years’ seniority in the service.’ He paused and looked at Magnus with sudden concern. ‘If you agree, I can probably get you something in the Foreign Office; a civil post … possibly in England. Not just influence, you understand; your record in Ceylon was excellent.’
‘I was thinking of something rather different,’ said Magnus, certain, from the way his father raised his eyebrows with ironic surprise, that he had wanted to see him merely to persuade him to accept some quiet position from which he could cause no trouble in the future. ‘I’m thinking of journalism.’
‘To what purpose?’ Sir James asked abruptly. Magnus met the searching gaze of his father’s flinty blue eyes.
‘The influence of the press on the course of public affairs is not negligible.’
‘Very true, and as often as not that influence is far from beneficial.’
Magnus managed an unforced laugh.
‘I’m sure you don’t think I’ll pander only to the most maudlin and vicious public taste.’
‘Charles expects you to write only in the Radical interest.’
‘I’ll have to find employment before I can write in any interest.’
Magnus, who had expected his father to press him on this point, was surprised when he said in an unmistakably conciliatory voice:
‘You are not perhaps aware that those who have written most for the public press, and often with the nation’s interests at heart, often live in obscurity and die in poverty. A briefless barrister may end a judge; a physician be knighted and come to five thousand a year. Not so the journalist, whose profession gives no social distinction and small financial reward. In society the occupation is not even avowed, except in private. A journalist may be feared, but never respected. I don’t pretend to understand why this should be so, but know it to be true.’ He got up and walked across the room, turning by the antique globe next to a small pair of library steps; his habit of pacing about, Magnus supposed, deriving from the quarter-deck. ‘Few men are happy, Magnus, unless their efforts are properly appreciated and rewarded.’
‘I don’t want social distinction or to avow my occupation in society, but I’m grateful for your opinion.’
Sir James glanced at his son to see that he was not mocking him, but, encouraged by his apparent sincerity, said quietly:
‘Allow me to make a proposition … treat it how you will. If you decide to pursue a career which I consider worthy of your abilities, I will provide you with sufficient capital to add a further five hundred per annum to your income. On my retirement from the active list, whenever that may be, I will add a further five hundred to that sum.’ He paused to give Magnus time to take this in. ‘Of course you will need to consider this.’
‘I reject it,’ Magnus replied without hesitation.
‘You do?’ Sir James stared at him with amazement. ‘May I ask why?’
It occurred to Magnus that during the past fifteen years, as post-captain, ambassador and admiral, his father would have had few opportunities for any conversation other than with subordinates, and was therefore entirely unaccustomed to disagreement.
‘I don’t think my reasons would please you.’
Sir James nodded, as though he had predicted this answer.
‘Nor did your absence on my arrival and the discovery from Charles that you chose instead to stay in a posting-inn.’
‘I hope he also told you what it feels like to travel on a country road with a broken shoulder.’
‘I accept that reason, and would still like to know why …’
‘If Charles gets this estate and most of your capital, I am entitled to some capital of my own without conditions.’ Until Magnus had said this, he had not realised how angry he had become.
‘There’s some logic in that,’ Sir James conceded calmly. ‘But what’s the use of my settling capital on you when you’ve never stuck at anything? Prove yourself, and then I’ll think again.’
His father’s evident conviction that every word he had spoken was just and reasonable provoked Magnus almost to the point of screaming.
‘When I was twenty,’ he whispered, ‘you cleared my debts and for that service I spent seven futile years on a distant island as a criminal might serve a sentence.’ His voice rose and shook as he said: ‘I will submit to no further conditions.’
‘You’re perfectly entitled to do as you please, and so of course am I.’
Magnus was trembling with rage as he walked to the door.
‘Since you have chosen to speak of money … you may remember that when mother died her capital became yours. Do you suppose she would ever have withheld my rightful share from me as a bribe to make me please her?’ He breathed deeply, horrified that he felt exactly as he had done in his father’s presence eight years before. ‘Your legal ownership of that money,’ he ended quietly, ‘gives you no moral right to keep it from me.’
‘My moral obligation to her is to see that you are saved from imbecile connections such as the one Charles tells me you formed with the Rigton Independent.’
Magnus paused in front of the mahogany doors, knowing that he should leave before his anger led to a permanent estrangement. Finally he turned.
‘I am to understand that if I pursue a secure career you will add to my security, but if I choose a precarious profession, you will guarantee me the poverty which you profess to be so eager to spare me? Like those excellent fathers who cut off with nothing those daughters who marry poor men and need help most.’
Sir James listened impassively and turned the antique globe with a ringed finger.
‘Forgive me if I reject your comparison,’ he replied with frigid and urbane politeness. ‘You have only to change your mind and to act in your own best interests for me to alter my attitude. I have not given you up. The harder the road, the more likely is the traveller to return. One day you will thank me.’ He looked at Magnus with sudden reproachfulness and pain. ‘I offered to use my influence on your behalf … proposed a capital settlement … Great heavens, must I now apologise for being at fault?’
‘Of course not. You’d thought hard and long about what I should do; it was ungrateful and selfish of me to have views of my own.’
Stung by his son’s sarcasm, Sir James came towards him and held out his hands.
‘Should a father not encourage a son to follow the course most likely to make him happy?’
The real perplexity with which this had been said calmed Magnus.
‘People learn nothing from advice, father, only from experience. I served the crown long enough to know I want other employment. Since you can’t live my life for me, I must go my own way.’
‘Don’t you mean to stay a few days?’
‘No.’
‘Because we disagreed? A day or two and both of us may see matters quite differently.’ Sir James’s tone was almost imploring.
‘I intended to go anyway.’
‘Surely we can …’ Sir James let his hands fall and looked away.
‘What did you say about chess, father?’
‘The comparison was a stupid one.’
‘But moves can’t be taken back, however long ago they were made. We both know that.’ Magnus opened the doors and looked back over his shoulder. ‘Look after Kate.’
‘I am not indifferent to her situation.’
‘I’m glad, father.’
From the landing Magnus heard his father call:
‘When you’ve proved yourself….’
He sighed and shouted back:
‘There are no admirals in Grub Street.’
*
Magnus met Charles in the hall. To the right of the door was a trunk and several chests.
‘Father going again so soon?’ asked Magnus.
‘I am … tomorrow. Damned inquiry at Devonport.’
&n
bsp; ‘I’m glad I didn’t miss you before you went, Charles. I wanted to thank you for all the helpful things you said to father about me.’
Charles met his eyes without embarrassment.
‘I said nothing discreditable.’
‘Then I’m sure you won’t find it discreditable if I tell you what I think of you.’ Magnus watched the blood rush to his brother’s cheeks and asked mildly: ‘Do you loathe me, Charles?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I could have sworn that my feelings for you were warmly reciprocated. You disappoint me.’
‘You’ve failed in a third-rate colony and I expect you’ll fail again; but I don’t loathe you. I pity you. You’re eaten up with envy and bitterness.’
‘Envy of you, Charles?’
‘Among others, yes.’
Magnus smiled and said quietly:
‘Please don’t worry about my unhappiness, Charles. I’d rather be dead than change places with you. Come to think of it, complacency like yours is a kind of death. My father’s distorted mirror-image, at best a pale reflection: an eager ghost.’
Charles walked to the door and said over his shoulder:
‘Nothing I could say would damage you more than your own words.’
‘I wonder where you read that, Charles.’ Suddenly Magnus laughed and went over to his brother. ‘I’m sorry. You did your best to blacken me with father, but I don’t suppose it made much difference. You talked about us being children … Best forget. I hope you get a good command and the widow; I hope you get her too.’
‘Is there nothing you’ve ever wanted?’ murmured Charles.
The unexpectedness of the question disturbed Magnus; it was not something he would have thought Charles capable of asking.
‘Many things,’ he replied softly, realising with a sense of shock that what first came to mind was to be a boy again, to do what he had told his father was impossible and take back past moves. To be hopeful and confident. To live in the protective mist of a child’s half-formed imagination. Better by far to have Charles’s crude ambitions than this yearning for a bright lost world. Without looking at his brother, Magnus walked past him.
‘I must see Catherine.’
Magnus found his sister in the blue morning room. She got up and came towards him, her grey silk dress rustling as she moved.
‘I’m afraid my talk with father went as might have been expected.’
‘Tell me,’ she murmured.
‘He was reasonable according to his lights … I according to mine. There was no meeting.’ He took her hand for a moment and pressed it before letting it fall. ‘I’m afraid I’ve done you little good. I can understand why you felt angry with me yesterday.’
‘Can you, Magnus?’
Pretending not to have noticed the sad hint of reproach in her voice, he smiled.
‘If I had to stay here, I think I’d murder one or other of them.’
‘Necessity is an excellent pacifier.’
He remembered the terror of the future she had expressed on the evening he came to Leaholme Hall. The sight of her sad face and bright eyes filled him with grief.
‘We’ll see each other soon. You’ll stay with Aunt Warren in London; we’ll do lots of things.’
‘I should like that.’ She hesitated a moment and then said awkwardly: ‘I’m sorry I behaved badly to your friend.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘It’s so stupid. … I liked him, you see.’ She looked despondent but brightened. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a chance to apologise to him in London.’
‘I expect so.’ Magnus was surprised by a definite feeling of reluctance and could not escape the conclusion that, though fond of his sister, he did not want her to become friendly with Strickland. She evidently sensed his misgiving but mistook his reason.
‘Are you afraid I may make a fool of myself?’ she asked with a reproving smile. ‘I like him. No more than that. So you needn’t worry about father’s disapproval.’
The teasing, almost coquettish way in which she had spoken irritated him.
‘Father’s disapproval never influenced me,’ he replied, looking at the French clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I’ve a “fly” waiting,’ he said, raising his hands helplessly.
‘Then you must go.’
He did not move for a moment, but then, seeing her come towards him, he kissed her cheek and left the room.
*
In the departing ‘fly’, Magnus was still troubled by his reaction to his sister’s interest in Tom, nor could he get Charles’s question out of his mind. He thought of the perfect days when Charles and his father had been away at sea, and he living at home with his mother and Catherine: an age of innocence soon ended. Oxford. Some friends, bent on his initiation, had taken him to a notorious brothel. The girls, many of them no more than twelve or thirteen, had been lined up in a row, their expressions bored and listless. His friends lifted up skirts with their canes, prodded breasts and thighs, with as much delicacy as they might have shown inspecting horses for sale at a fair. The slang term for copulation then in vogue was to ‘spend’; an appropriate one, Magnus thought. The customers had been separated from each other by thin partitions. Magnus had thought of animals mounting in a farmyard as he listened to the grunting and oaths of his friends and the whores’ feigned squeals and moans of enjoyment. The smells, the blind gropings and the absence of all feeling, except a coarse and brutal hunger for flesh, sickened him. His friends laughed at him, but he did not return. Instead he had showed his nerve in other ways: by gambling and never hesitating to use his fists if insulted. The laughter had stopped, but his personal isolation had begun.
In Ceylon the same. Being attractive and thought richer than he was, he had been pursued by numerous daughters of army officers and planters, who clutched hysterically at every new arrival who seemed at all likely to fulfil their dream of marriage. He remembered pink faces shining with sweat and the touch of damp hot hands at regimental balls. In tropical heat the girls had still danced in seven or eight petticoats. Their trivial jealousies and constant obsession with clothes and etiquette had made them seem absurd and pathetic to Magnus when he recalled his mother’s intelligence and serenity.
Some of his brother officers had married out of frustration and boredom, others had taken native mistresses. Magnus had found pleasure in renunciation; lonely at first, but in time deriving positive satisfaction from his self-sufficiency. He alone, the sheltered cossetted boy, proved impervious to the isolation of remote surveying expeditions and to months away on outstations working on the colony’s roads. This sense of completeness, of possessing everything within himself had been his answer to his inability to find either desire or pleasure with women.
And now? he asked himself in the dark interior of the ‘fly’. At the first hint of a close friendship with Strickland, he had behaved with a child’s possessiveness. But at least he knew the answer to Charles’s question. What he wanted most was to end his long isolation – to recapture lost happiness through true friendship.
19
Two days after Charles’s departure for Devonport, Sir James Crawford visited Hanley Park to call on his god-daughter. On entering the hall he was surprised by the absence of any visible signs of mourning. In fact the atmosphere at first reminded him of the air of bustle and preparation preceding a ball. Doors were open and servants hurrying back and forth, carrying china, dragging furniture aside, and shouting instructions to each other. Only when he saw their faces did he realise that their task was not a happy one. While waiting for a maid to fetch the butler, he watched two grumbling footmen stagger past, supporting between them a large gilt-framed mirror surmounted by an eagle. Obviously the main reception rooms were being shut-up.
The butler came down with the news that her ladyship was with her bailiff and her agent, but that Lord Goodchild would see Sir James at once. Although he had last seen Humphrey as a boy of nine, the shock of hearing him addressed by his new title passed quickly. Crawford followed the butler through a succession of
cold uncarpeted rooms, past shapeless stacks of furniture under brown hollands and dust sheets towards the library. Even the curtains and pictures had been taken down. Clearly this reduction of accommodation would be followed by a similar reduction in staff. That Goodchild had left debts did not surprise Sir James, but that these drastic economies should be needed, so soon after his death, seemed incredible. A feeling of pity for Helen was followed by one of anger with the dead man.
When Harry had proposed to Helen, Crawford, who had then often advised her widowed mother on many matters, had recommended refusal: a suggestion which had outraged both mother and daughter. Refuse a peer and a man of Lord Goodchild’s wealth? He must be mistaken about the young man’s character; further acquaintance would prove to him that Harry was anything but the coarse young rake his envious rivals might make him out to be. He was high spirited certainly; surely dashing manliness should not be condemned in one of his years? But Sir James, who had discovered that Goodchild had been scratched from the list of members at Almack’s for ‘insulting’ several members’ wives – rumour had it that he had tried to rape one of them – had not been impressed. He did not deny that it was common enough for rich young peers to boast of never going to bed till nine each morning, but sensuality apart, he had thought he detected in Harry an arrogant cynicism which would preclude the humility required on the lower slopes of any worthwhile career. And Sir James considered non-fulfilment through pride, neglect and pleasure seeking, rather than through innate incapacity, the worst sin that a man of rank and wealth could commit: a sin against himself. For Crawford it still seemed as reprehensible for a peer to decline the political opportunities opened to him by his position, as for a sailor to desert his ship. But, as Sir James walked through the stripped and echoing rooms, he felt sorrow rather than satisfaction in witnessing so striking a vindication of the opinion he had expressed fourteen years before.
Humphrey walked across the library and held out a stiff hand to his visitor. Ever since early childhood he had been in awe of Sir James Crawford, and although he had seen him less than a dozen times in all his thirteen years, the impression made had been a deep one; less by what the great man had said than by what Humphrey had imagined his part to have been in actions worthy to be classed with those of Howe, Nelson and Collingwood. Sir James would have been surprised to hear that for Humphrey the battle of Navarino, the Syrian War and the West African blockade evoked images as compelling as accounts of the Glorious First of June, and the battles of the Nile and Copenhagen. To be addressed as ‘my lord’ and treated as an equal by such a man made Humphrey blush with pleasure. He still vividly remembered the day when the admiral had shown him his sketch books, full of drawings of places as far away as Valparaiso and Rio, Batavia and Penang.
