The Road from the Monument

by Storm Jameson

  ‘Mr. Blount is here and would like to speak to you.’

  Shall I ever feel easy with him again? he wondered. He stood up as his brother-in-law came in, and drew out a chair for him, into which Blount settled himself comfortably, long beautiful hands drooping, thin legs stretched. He made no pretence of having come about the list he dropped carelessly on to Gregory’s table. He said at once, in his casual charming voice,

  ‘Well, have you talked to Corry?’

  Nothing I say to him will make the least difference, thought Gregory: I can say what I please. ‘Not to much effect, I’m afraid.’

  Blount raised his eyebrows a little. ‘D’you mean to tell me that he refuses to be reasonable.’

  ‘I didn’t try very hard.’

  Coldly vexed, his brother-in-law said, ‘Do you want to be penalised for a commonplace sexual… indiscretion?’

  The witty amusing version of it that I gave him is still in his mind, Gregory thought wryly. ‘You’re right, my dear Arthur, that’s just what it was.’

  ‘I’m not criticising you,’ Blount said easily, ’and I’m not trying to dictate to you. My only concern in this very pointless, very tiresome business is to make certain of Corry’s good will. It’s perfectly simple. He has no proof of your responsibility — probably none exists — but he could, if he wants to, make trouble. Unpleasant trouble.’

  ‘Why should he? He’s a very good friend of mine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Am I? Gregory asked himself. ‘No.’

  ‘My impression,’ Blount said, ’is that he’s an extremely ambitious man, but not a bold one. He has climbed with the greatest prudence…. I should say he’s quite exceptionally intelligent — as an administrator.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He has possibly — even probably — always been more important in the Institute than you realise — and likes to think of himself as directing the Director. No, no — ’ he waved a hand limply —’ I don’t say that you ever allowed him to do it. Merely that he has imagined himself doing it. And if, now, you, as he would say to himself, get out of hand, if you take no pains to make sure that he has an interest — I say: an interest — in supporting you, he may resent your neglect of him, and he may — I say: may — forget to be cautious, and try to throw you.’

  Gregory felt a touch of remorse…. Why the hell am I letting this man abuse Lambert?… He said coolly, ‘I don’t believe it. You’re not allowing for his share of a rather rare vice — loyalty.’

  As though he were too tired or too indifferent or too contemptuous to speak, Blount shrugged his shoulders.

  Gregory looked at him with curiosity. ‘It never occurred to me before — that you have a very low opinion of human decency. It surprises me.’

  ‘In my opinion,’ Blount said, very mildly, ’the only man whose disinterest — don’t let’s use any large words — whose disinterest you can be moderately sure of is one who has no need to fight for his security, no very strong passions — no belief that anything at all is worth a tiring struggle.’

  ‘A man like yourself?’

  ‘Oh, if you like.’

  It struck Gregory now, that not only had he never known this man, but that even at this moment he was in touch only with the frontier of a cold sterile continent. In a strange way this gave him confidence, as though he were talking to a complete stranger, a man he would never see again.

  ‘You’re being very patient, Arthur.’ He felt himself smiling. ‘I don’t want to exasperate you but I ought, I think, to warn you that the risks of an open scandal, if they really exist, don’t alarm me. They did — they don’t any longer…. I don’t, you know, recognise myself. Absurd — but my face has caved in as it wouldn’t have done if there had been anything solid to prop it up.’

  His brother-in-law stifled a yawn. ‘I don’t understand you, my dear fellow. One might think you wanted to ruin yourself. To destroy all you’ve achieved, all, if I may say so, that you are.’

  Gregory was silent.

  ‘Having — what shall I say? — been extremely imprudent, the only reasonable anxiety — the only anxiety of a reasonable man — is to see that the damage is as small as possible. No penalty — or the very mildest. Surely I’m right?’

  Gregory took another step across the cold frontier. He knew it was futile. ‘Tell me one thing. Do you believe that so long as you can contrive not to suffer socially all your moral suffering will disappear as well, at the same moment?’

  Blount became almost animated. ‘Moral suffering?’ he said, moving his fingers as though he were going to play cat’s-cradle. ‘Isn’t that a very clumsy, or a very neurotic way of saying that you dislike the sight of yourself behaving vulgarly, or stupidly?’

  Gregory frowned. ‘Oh, nonsense. You can’t violate a moral instinct and feel nothing worse than social discomfort.’

  ‘Ah —’ a smile only to be called priestly sprang in the other’s pale eyes — ’talk of moral instincts is quite beyond me.’ His smile sharpened. ‘You’ll be talking next of your feelings of guilt — sin.’

  ‘Why not?’ Gregory said, with a smile.

  He knew perfectly well why not. Blount — in the very centre of the fine subtly-woven cocoon he loved spinning round his views — cherished a simple belief, simple to the point of puerility: that a sense of sin is a habit of the lower orders. A habit he would be sorry to see them lose, since it helps to keep them in order.

  An expression of controlled distaste crossed his brother-in-law’s face. ‘What you have — as you put it — violated is, first of all, a young woman who was no doubt more than willing. Secondly, a rule of social prudence. A man without any position, without attachments, without reputation — a nobody — could behave as you did, and no harm done. But not you, my friend — not Gregory Mott.’

  With a shock, as though his skull had been split open to let in a thread of light, Gregory realised Blount’s wisdom, the mental elegance he had so admired and envied, was and had always been a profound scepticism of the worth of all human effort, the coldness of an abnormally lazy man. He said lightly,

  ‘I can’t argue with a man who denies the existence of a moral instinct.’

  Blount made a gesture of indifference.

  ‘All things considered — and I include your state of mind, your barbarous state of mind,’ he drawled, ‘I believe you may be on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Or you may have lost your self-control in a way that is really, if you don’t mind my saying so, inadmissible….’

  (Gregory felt a sudden gaiety, springing heaven knew where or how. You mean, he thought, that the underbred nobody in me is showing through the clever writer.)

  ’… my advice to you, now, is to resign your Directorship of the Institute and go abroad for a time.’

  ‘Good of you to advise me,’ Gregory said, smiling.

  ‘You can give illness as the reason.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Lambert had left early to go and see the girl.

  He had spent two days in an exasperated indecision, tempted, after the futile talk with Gregory, to rush straight off to her. His leery good sense checked him, warning him sharply, in his father’s voice, that it would be foolish to allow Gregory’s treatment of him — high-handed, pompous, unfriendly and all that — to push him into anything unwise. Better sleep on it. After all, he reminded himself, you have his interests to protect, as well as that poor girl’s…. When he had repeated this several times, he believed it — or he supposed it was what he believed. He slept on it two nights, soothed whenever his resentment, his justifiable resentment, pricked him awake, by the touch of his wife’s warm body, softer and more malleable in sleep than it ever was during the day, when long corsets and a restless activity stiffened it to the rigidity of a hard bolster. At moments he pitied Gregory, sincerely. But why, he asked himself angrily, doesn’t he trust me? Why — although he has as good as confessed — doesn’t he tell me the truth and let me help
him out?

  His reflections ran him head on into a wall. The one thing — apart from Gregory’s maddening and inexcusable arrogance that was hampering him in his efforts to do the best for everybody, was that he had no hard evidence. Until he had that he couldn’t decide on the right, the most sensible way to act…. And suppose I get the evidence, he thought, what then?… He still felt uncertain. It all depends on what I find out — and on whether he is reasonable with me.

  His mind jumped. He thought sharply: And the decision about what is and isn’t reasonable will be mine, by God. Mine.

  This last thought gave him immense satisfaction. It put the clock back a long way, to the days when, in the gravelled courtyard of Liggett’s School for Gentlemen’s Sons, he was the protector, the well-off admired friend. Since then… Since then, he thought coolly, I’ve let myself be led by the nose too damn easily. Time I asserted myself.

  Even in these streets, with their hurrying shabby women and mean shops, there was a lightness, a thread of excitement, which reminded him that it was spring. Far, far above the crowded pavements and the stale smells, the soft sky of May suggested to him all kinds of ideas he knew were foolish, but he let them hang about in his mind — that he might begin writing again, or go and live peacefully in the country, or learn to speak French. When he reached the even shabbier street, and the house, with its dirty peeling walls and unwashed windows, he noticed for the first time that there was a tree at the corner, a young plane tree: he even imagined that he could smell it, a fresh smell of young leaves. It was nonsense, but it brought a smile on his long thin lips, and he thought warmly: This time she’s going to listen to sense. Poor creature.

  The front door was ajar. He pushed it open. There was no one in the passage, and, moving noiselessly, on the points of his toes, he crossed it to the stairs leading to the basement and crept down them as carefully. The door of her room was shut. He knocked. Silence. He knocked again.

  ‘Who is it?’

  He could only just hear her voice: it sounded as though she were cowering against the farthest wall, a hand over her mouth: he raised his own voice to say reassuringly, ’This is Corry, Miss Verity. Lambert Corry. May I come in?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Well, to see you.’ I should have brought her something, he thought, with regret. Flowers. A few oranges.

  The door opened, not widely. She stood back, pressing herself against a wall, to let him walk inside. It was like stepping into an unaired closet; all the warmth of the street, the flickering brightness, ran together into a sour musty smell that caught his throat and made him cough. The room was neat, as though she had just been tidying it. Does she know what it’s like in here? he wondered.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked again. She sounded indifferent and hostile.

  Lambert smiled at her. ’I’ve been expecting you to come and see me.’

  ‘I told you I wasn’t going to.’

  He reminded himself that he must be careful not to let either the discomfort of being in this room, or what seemed her distrust of him, make him impatient. He made an attempt to coax her.

  ‘I know you did, my dear, but I felt sure that when you’d thought it over you would see how necessary it is for you to come and see Mr. Mott for yourself.’

  ‘You said you would speak to him.’

  ‘I did speak to him.’

  ‘Very well, then.’

  Lambert looked at her. Although it was only a little over four weeks since he had seen her, he could see the change in her. By George, we haven’t so much time left, he thought. He said gently,

  ‘My dear, you’re not treating me fairly. I want to help you but, after all, I’ve only your word for it that it was Gregory Mott you went to bed with, and not some other man. Unless you can provide some proof, how do you expect that I can do anything with him? It’s not reasonable.’

  She stared at him with those flat blue eyes, like the eyes of a cat, and made what struck him as a quite pointless answer.

  ‘Why are you so against him?’

  Is she right in the head? he wondered. ‘I’m not against anyone. I’m trying to do the best thing for you, for him — for your child.’ That went home, he noticed with satisfaction. ‘I can’t say you’re helping me.’

  She looked down. ‘But what good will me coming to your posh office do me?’

  Her sullenness was beginning to annoy him more than her stupidity. Damn it all, he thought, I’m taking more trouble than enough with her, and getting less thanks than if I’d treated her as callously as Master Gregory has done. He felt ashamed of himself — it was too like losing patience with a child or an animal. But gentleness was getting him nowhere, and — it’s for her sake, he thought — he decided to try a little sensible brutality.

  ‘Listen, my dear girl. What you must do is to come to the office — at once — ask for me, and I’ll take you in to see Mr. Mott — and you’ll tell him that unless he does something for you you’ll take other steps, you’ll go to a lawyer—’

  She cut him short. ’A lawyer — me? Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t.’

  ‘You won’t need to do it,’ he said. ‘When he sees you — and remember, I shall be there, listening — he’ll agree to look after you. I guarantee that. But unless you face him with it,in fact unless you threaten, I have no hold over him — no proof.’

  ‘It’s what I said,’ she answered in the same thin sullen voice, ’you’re against him, you hate him.’

  Heaven give me patience, thought Lambert. ‘There isn’t much time, is there?’ he said pleasantly. ‘What are you — eight months gone? Eh?’

  She shrank from him as though he had laid a lecherous hand on her. ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ she cried.

  ‘If you’re telling the truth — if you are telling it — what have you to be afraid of?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Leave me alone.’

  ‘Suppose I do leave you — what then, my dear?’

  No answer. A look of perverse mindless obstinacy, the stubbornness of a mule.

  ‘You’ve been to the office once. What’s so terrible about coming there again? Why won’t you come?’

  The blood rose suddenly in her face. ‘I won’t make a show of myself, that’s why!’ Her hands fluttered in front of her swollen body for a moment.

  ‘Oh come now,’ he said, ’that’s all nonsense.’

  She looked at him with the wildest abhorrence. ‘Why do you come here harrying me?’

  He felt that he had every right to be exasperated. The only thing now, he thought, that may bring her to her senses, is to put the fear of God into her. He said coldly,

  ‘You know that what you’ve been saying about Mr. Mott — if it isn’t true, or if you can’t prove it — is libellous. You can be punished for it.’

  To his surprise she took this calmly. ‘All I meant is — you ask too many questions.’

  ‘My dear girl, I’m trying to do you a kindness.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. That’s not true. You’re nosey, you want to know too much.’

  He let his glance move down her, deliberately, from her throat, over her body, to her thin stockingless legs. ‘There isn’t much you need tell, is there?’ he said, smiling.

  Her chin trembled like an old woman’s: tears started, and in a moment she was crying loudly and uncontrollably. ‘You’re unfair and horrible,’ she said, choking, ’you should be ashamed of yourself.’

  Nobody could possibly have looked uglier than she did now, with reddened eyelids and blotched skin. But — extraordinary, he thought — there was something about her state of misery and abandon that excited him; he had an impulse to take hold of her trembling body in its cotton overall, and pass his hands down it and stroke it. He touched her cheek lightly, with a finger. She jerked back.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘Go away, don’t touch me.’

  Her landlady will hear her, he thought. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said, ’you’ll only make yourse
lf ill. I’m going, I’m going.’ At the door he turned and said in a voice full of genial good sense, ‘I’ve given you very sound advice, my dear. You think it over for a few days.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  After dinner that evening Lambert sat down in the easiest chair in the room with Frank Beasley’s novel: he had been struggling to read it for weeks, but never finished it; after half an hour he always fell asleep, overcome by its solemn, painstaking, thoroughly worthy insistence that life in offices and bedrooms is like this, people are like this, they sit at desks, they reflect, they intrigue against each other, they make love, as if they were the people you see every day in Whitehall or the Piccadilly tube… and how extraordinarily dull, pointless, colourless, depressing it all is, he thought. His eyelids were heavy. Another minute and he would have dropped off. His wife laughed and took the book from him. In a light voice, with an energy that meant she had made up her mind to settle something with him, she said,

  ‘Very well, if you’re not going to read… Tell me — have you decided yet who is to get Easterby’s place at the Institute?’

  ‘No,’ he said, with reluctance. He had let himself hope that she had forgotten about it. I should know better, he thought wryly: she never forgets. ‘It will be decided this month. He leaves at the end of June. Harriet Ellis —’

  ‘Oh, no, not Harriet Ellis,’ she interrupted. ‘Can’t you at least block that?’

  That withered kernel, his bureaucrat’s conscience, pricked him. ‘She would be excellent, y’know.’

  ‘Not better than Frank,’ Penny said vehemently.

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I am.’ She seated herself on the floor and rested her arms on his knees, smiling up at him…. He looked at her plump throat and shoulders, and remembered that this afternoon he had been attracted by others, whiter and less well-nourished. To brazen this out (as his mother would have said), he thought: Thigh for thigh, I prefer the one I’m used to…. ‘Have you talked to Gregory about him?’

  ‘No.’