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Fellow Passenger
Geoffrey Household
THERE IS SATISFACTION IN being imprisoned in the Tower of London. It seems to set a man, however undeservedly, in the company of the great. I wonder if criminals feel the same about Dartmoor. It is likely. After all, a sentence of twenty years, served in Dartmoor, does mean that one has reached the summit of one’s profession.
I wish I could claim that the blackness of my crime was worthy of the grandeur of my prison, but the fact is that I do not know whether I can be found guilty of High Treason or not; nor does a somewhat embarrassed State. That suits both parties. The Government is in no hurry to decide what shall be done with me. I, so long as they continue to keep me safe from newspaper reporters, am in no hurry to leave. The food, while uninteresting, is at least as good as that of the average English hotel, and the service suggests a club in which the rules are rather too stringent and the staff a little too ceremonious in manners and dress.
There is also the blessing of leisure, as well as a strong tradition for its use. So, for my own amusement, I shall emulate Sir Walter Raleigh and Archbishop Laud. Like me, they were innocent of High Treason but thoroughly deserved the accusation. That, I think, is a combination which lends itself to literature.
I have no intention of justifying myself, for I do not feel in the least ill-used. If I were of pure English birth and shared the national gift for solemn indignation I should probably write to The Times—assuming that from this institution one is permitted to address the other—and kindle the sympathies of those excellent citizens who fret themselves about the eccentricities of birds and the injustices of bureaucrats. But I spent my youth in Latin America, and I am too much in love with the world as it is to bother about what it ought to be.
My father, James Howard-Wolferstan, emigrated to Ecuador in the early nineteen hundreds. He was, he said, the last of his line, and I have only heard of one other bearer of the name. He never told me why he left England. At any rate he was right to choose a small country where his flamboyant and kindly character would not be lost.
Ever since I can remember him he was the most dignified exhibit of Quito, dressed as if he were a fashionable clubman in a London June of 1908. But probably I underrate the formality of the time. Dressed, I should say, as if he were off for a week-end in the country during which he was likely to meet King Edward VII at lunch. Invariably he had a carnation in his buttonhole, and a white slip under his waistcoat. At race meetings and bull fights he would sport a grey top-hat. He would have nothing to do with the small British colony, but preserved proudly his British passport. So have I—or I shouldn’t be where I am.
He cannot have arrived in Ecuador with any capital, and I have no idea what the qualifications were—beyond personal charm—which permitted him to obtain the hand and dowry of my mother. Thereafter he lived a life of gracious idleness, buying and selling concessions on the eastern side of the Cordillera. He was always at ease with politicians—indeed I often think he might have been Vice-President of Ecuador if he had cared to surrender his nationality—and foreigners, especially North Americans, were impressed by his appearance and undoubted influence.
I loved my mother dutifully, what there was of her to love. She was his absolute opposite. Dressed in unrelieved and dusty black, she spent her days and nights creeping rapidly between the Convent of the Sacred Heart and the Cathedral. In early days there must—since I exist—have been occasional exceptions to this routine, but I remember none.
She would, of course, have been happily fulfilled in a nunnery, but her parents, who carried the blood of the Incas, preferred that their only daughter should increase the lay population rather than the clerical. I suspect that my father was far from their first choice as a son-in-law, but it was said that only he was persistent, perhaps over-persistent, in his attentions to her. Lest I appear unfilial, let me add that it was never said in my presence—or only once, and by my second cousin who was a lieutenant in the glorious army. I slapped his face and, though already under the civilizing influence of Oxford, shot him in the leg (I aimed for it, too) at the comically ceremonious meeting which followed. But I have no doubt that his libellous statement contained a certain element of truth.
My mother, poor dear, had little influence on my father and myself. I do not think she found any tragedy in that. She was entirely absorbed by the salvation of her soul—not selfishly, but in the firm belief that we could be saved from eternal torment by her prior arrival in the next world and her careful employment of political influence with its Authorities.
My father died two years ago. He had known for some time that his fate was on him, but never allowed me to suspect it. Only when his doctor told him it was that week or the next did he break the news to me, and then with the very minimum of solemnity between his first and second brandy.
When he saw that I was wholly overcome by sorrow—for in moments of extreme emotion I cannot help being as Latin as I am English—he told me to restrain myself and to relight my cigar. I can remember his exact words:
‘Everybody’s father has got to kick the bucket sooner or later,’ he said. ‘What’s so bloody astonishing about it?’ You’ll miss me for a month, I trust, and I’ll miss you for the next forty years or so—if there’s anything in all that stuff of your poor, dear mother’s, which I rather hope there isn’t.’
Then he told me that very little would remain for me after his death, and that the various companies of which he was chairman or president had only been kept in apparent prosperity by his reputation and the aid of a really clever auditor. We had lived well, and I would not have reproached him even if it had entered my head to do so.
‘The auditor will skip with his savings as soon as I am under the daisies,’ he assured me, ‘and my advice to you is to follow him pronto. I’ve got a few hundred pounds in gold, and I want you to take them now. Book your passage home, and as soon as you’ve planted me—for I’d like you to be there—clear out before they start to settle up the estate.’
My father had never lied to me—though there were, of course, things which he found unnecessary to be described in detail. I therefore placed absolute trust in the story which he now told me, especially as it amused him. He was capable of being amused up to the end. His last conscious act, a fortnight later, was to wink at me.
‘I have never mentioned to you,’ he went on, ‘the old home of the Howard-Wolferstans, and I don’t propose to discuss it now. It was the manor of the village of Moreton Intrinseca. Go upstairs to the attics on the third floor. In my day a pack of servants used to sleep there, but from what I read in the English papers there won’t be many of them now and they won’t sleep under the tiles.
‘Turn to the right at the head of the staircase. The third door to the right leads into a small attic with a dormer window giving on to the parapet, and a fireplace. About three feet up the chimney you’ll find enough capital to settle you in any respectable business. My advice would be to look up your old Oxford friends and buy yourself a partnership in a firm of stockbrokers. But if you prefer a racing stable, that’s your affair.
‘And, whatever you do, don’t try burglary!’ he added. ‘Make friends with the present owner of Moreton Intrinseca. Stay a week with him. Marry his daughter, if you must. It doesn’t matter whom a man is married to, so long as he has enough money to keep his temper.’
His instructions, on their face value, belonged to a fairy tale, but I knew him: the mere fact that there was som
e sardonic jest which he hugged to himself made it certain that he was in earnest. He did not encourage me to question him, nor did I wish to. He had just told me that he was going to die, and attic chimneys were a wretched irrelevance. I only asked why on earth his money should still be there. He replied that he had good reason to think it was, and why wouldn’t it be? Even in his days no one ever lit a fire in the attics, and he was prepared to bet they hadn’t since. Early Victorian architects, he said, always built a fireplace, whether it was likely to be used or not. It was part of the room, like the wallpaper.
When my father’s funeral was over, I obeyed him and sailed for England. The financial disaster was just as great as he had feared, though not in the eyes of the public. That was because the concessions which he and his companies held were so enormous that they could be valued at any sum which the Government agreed; and agreement was easy since the politicians were heavily involved. Nor was the hushing-up wholly a question of money. My father was a much loved man, and nobody wanted to take revenge on his memory.
I was partly educated in England, for my father wanted it to become my country. Though he himself could never be bothered to return, he profoundly enjoyed all the second-hand impressions which I could give him. I used to record for him any incidents and characters with the sort of richness he appreciated. After his death it seemed to me that there were few to record, though whether it was I or the nation which had changed I could not tell. I had not been out of Latin America since 1939.
The after-war years I spent in idle movement for the sake of sport or exploration or wild-cat mining. I had some excuse for relaxation since, during the six years of war, I had been employed as a clerk, ostensibly Ecuadorian, at various airports, and as a guitarist in the Callao café which was the favourite of the German colony. My cover was never broken, and the less I talk about it, the better for me. Anyway, service to the State will not get you out of the Tower. It never did. The most it could ensure was that you would be beheaded instead of hanged—a doubtful advantage if you happened to meet the headsman on a day when he was off his drive and trusting to short approaches.
By the time I had settled into a small furnished flat in London I found myself with about five hundred pounds in the bank which vanished at the devil of a pace. I was not being at all prodigal, but it takes time for anyone with Latin tastes to adjust himself to contemporary England. Merely to eat and drink as well as a prosperous peasant is a shocking extravagance. So it was not long before I went down to Moreton Intrinseca.
There was no kindly retired colonel with whom I could make friends; no daughter to tell me how different I was from the average Englishman. The manor had become a damned hostel for scientists. I had lunch at the local pub and discovered that the house, for as long as anyone remembered, had belonged to two old maiden ladies, and that after they died it had remained empty for three or four years until it was requisitioned by the War Office. The War Office had passed it on to the Ministry of Supply, who used it to house a sort of upper middle class of experts from the atomic plant some five miles to the west. The real upper class were at the universities or where they pleased. A lower class was, I gathered, confined in the huts of the plant itself. But the chaps who really administered the plant were entertained in the ancestral mansion of the Howard-Wolferstans.
Back in London, I went to work to find an introduction into this specialized monastic world. I was, of course, under the impression that a man of standing and good education could still go more or less where he pleased. Before the war, if I had wanted, for example, to have a look at our latest tank, I feel sure that I could have found someone at my club to show me round the factory. One’s loyalty was taken for granted. Security applied only to foreigners.
I could not get in touch. That upper middle class of cyclotronic monks seemed to have no background. Its world nowhere overlapped my own, which was social and commercial rather than scientific. However, I had academic contacts, too, and I looked up old friends and tutors. My innocent enquiries must have been a bit too frank. I was gently warned—so gently that I might only have been questioning a point of Greek grammar which had been settled for ever in 1892—that perhaps I was drawing too much attention to myself. It is sometimes a handicap that in looks I take after my mother. The English will never assume reliability in a too bronzed complexion.
I gave it up. After all, I had no idea what was in the attic chimney. My father had not told me, and, as the whole matter seemed faintly distasteful to him, I had not asked questions. I made a note of his directions, but very reluctantly and only because he insisted that I should.
A satisfactory job was difficult to find. For one thing, I was thirty-seven and had been too many years away from the conventional ladder; for another, I found it hard to say what I had done in the war. Unofficial, unpaid service in South America. I myself would distrust anyone who came to me with that yarn and no proof of it.
At last I got on to a really sound business proposition. I was offered a partnership in a firm to be founded by men of my own sort who knew the Latin American markets, the politicians and their exchange difficulties. We were out to persuade manufacturers to entrust their export business to us, very much as they would give their advertising to professional advertisers. It was a job after my own heart, allowing me to live and prosper with one foot on each side of the Atlantic. But it needed capital, and that, if existing at all, was at Moreton Intrinseca.
There was an excellent country hotel within two miles of the village, and there I stayed for a week. The earnest young scientists from the manor would occasionally drop in and become noisy in the bar. It wasn’t drink. They were competing for the attention of an athletic and over-painted young barmaid-secretary, and behaving like a visiting rugger team. They did not seem to know how to set about seduction quietly. It was easy enough to make acquaintances among them, but none asked me to visit him at the manor.
Towards the end of the week I found that two genial strangers were paying me drinks. I was accustomed to that. Police employed on security duties are all the same—German, Spanish or English. Their job must be far easier in American countries, north or south, than in England, where they are always up against the convention that one stranger does not normally ask questions of another.
So that was that, and I returned promptly to London to think out some new method of approach. It was all very well for my father to tell me to avoid burglary. He did not know that I had had a good eye for entries and exits ever since I was nearly caught with the archbishop’s god-daughter at the age of thirteen, and had to pretend tearfully that I was only looking for my mummy. The outer ring of security, protecting the Ministry’s secrets and stretching all over England, was evidently efficient; but the inner, more material ring around the manor was derisory. There were merely a twelve-foot brick wall, topped with barbed wire, and a gate with a doorkeeper on it day and night. After all, there was no reason for more. Burglars do not raid the simple bedrooms of scientists; and spies, I imagine, prefer to contact them on more neutral ground.
People have told me that I have a natural leaning towards lawlessness. I do not think that is true. I did consider at great length what a really English Englishman would do. He would undoubtedly write to the Ministry of Supply, giving every possible reference for his respectability, and ask permission to search for and recover his family property. I was instinctively unwilling to take this step. My father’s conception of property, while never dishonest, had a certain originality, and—since all my enquiries had led nowhere—I found it hard to prove what the connection of the Howard-Wolferstans with Moreton Intrinseca really was.
A chestnut tree, growing in the manor garden, appeared to me less futile than correspondence with the Ministry. It extended a noble branch into an open field, passing a clear ten feet above the wire-topped wall. I bought a length of good, light rope and attached a heavy hook to the end of it. With this and other simple necessaries in a small rucksa
ck, and myself attired as a hiker out for serious exercise, I departed from London in a motor coach and got off it at a cross-roads some eight miles from Moreton Intrinseca.
It was a hot evening in early May, when a temperature of seventy feels like ninety. The hawthorn was out; the hay was growing; and the scent of the countryside was as deliciously overpowering as anything I have known in the tropics. This island remains inhabited, I think, merely for the sake of that week in May; another, probably, in June; and a third, reasonably certain, in September. I walked across country to the edge of the downs above Moreton Intrinseca, and waited for darkness.
When the night was velvet black I circled round the village and found—after a couple of bad shots—the manor field and the chestnut tree. My first swing at the branch failed to catch and made a noise much more alarming than it really was. However, a wood-pigeon obligingly flew out, and under cover of her clatter, as she swerved towards the house through the little plantation inside the wall, I made a second swing at the branch and the hook caught.
I climbed the rope, pulled it up after me and stayed quiet for several minutes. Everything else was quiet—wood-pigeons, dogs, scientists and the village itself. The thick, smooth trunk of the chestnut looked as if it would be impossible to climb on my way out; so I shifted the hook to a firm hold on the garden side, curled up the rope in a fork and left hanging from it a piece of string by which it could be pulled down. When I had dropped to the ground, I attached the end of the string to a twig above my head. I reckoned that it would never be noticed even in daylight.
Once in the garden, I undid my pack and changed into pyjamas, dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. I did not know how many people lived permanently in the manor, but it stood to reason that there must be occasional distinguished visitors staying the night. A figure glimpsed on his way to the bathroom, with his face partly obscured by towel and dressing-gown collar, was most unlikely to be questioned even if he could not be immediately identified.
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