Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  The letter was long and the handwriting cramped and difficult to read. Mr Watson had a habit of underlining certain words as if they were significant. He asked her to conceal nothing from him and spoke of that dear face which he had once so admired. He was worried because some dolt of a barber had snipped his hair too short. Jealousy pierced her when she read that he had been unfaithful to her image in his memory. She studied his post-script and grew calmer. Dearest … with love … dearest … dearest. She fingered the scrap of dark ribbon and tears came into her eyes. How sweet it was to be loved! At the same time, she knew that the happiness she felt was against all the rules of common-sense – she hadn’t the least notion who J.S. Watson was. For a week now, she had struggled to remember each and every one of the young gentlemen of the College who had called on Mrs Curran. Except for a medical student with a complexion scarred from the small-pox, and a Frenchman who had sent her an impudent note, none of them came to mind. They were all lost, forgotten, and though she had positioned herself at the table in front of an imaginary draughts board and stared at the empty chair opposite, it was always Mr Roche she saw, always eighteen years old, his cuffs childishly stained with ink and a little burst blood vessel showing at the corner of his eye.

  John Selby Watson disembarked at Kingstown Harbour on the 23rd December. He would have called on Anne Armstrong the following day if Quin hadn’t talked him out of it.

  ‘At this time of the year,’ Quin advised, ‘she’ll have family obligations to consider. It would be best to wait a few days.’

  ‘She has no family,’ said Watson.

  Quin reminded him that there had been some mention of an aunt residing in Dublin who had daughters living in England. Watson reluctantly agreed that it was possible they had crossed over for the holiday and that Miss Armstrong was visiting them. Perhaps they were discussing him. He sent her a note instead, informing her of his arrival, and begging to be allowed to call on her at her earliest convenience. At this moment he didn’t think he was in love with her, but then neither did he love anybody else.

  He heard nothing from her for four days, during which time he became so uneasy that he imagined he was hopelessly in love with her and could not believe, would not believe, that he would ever hear from her again.

  ‘From what you have told me,’ Quin said, ‘it hardly seems likely.’ Only ten days before, Watson had written to him expressing alarm at the speed with which Anne Armstrong had replied to his initial enquiry. Letters were arriving by every post. She had hinted that he should make himself known to a Dr Connor, a past acquaintance of her dead mother, presumably to lash him to the mast in regard to his future intentions. Quin had urged him to parry the request: he had said he would be unwise to commit himself either on paper or by word of mouth.

  ‘Probably Miss Armstrong has gone into the country,’ he said. His own wife, recovering from a bout of the shingles, was staying with an uncle in Tuam.

  ‘There would be no point in it,’ said Watson. ‘She is alone in the world.’

  Quin thought this an exaggerated statement, on all counts. Wasn’t everyone in Ireland related to someone else? Instructed by Watson and helped by the curate of St Thomas’s Church, it was he who had discovered Miss Armstrong’s address. He happened to know that an agent for guano manure, by the name of Edward Armstrong, lived in the very same street in which she lodged. There was also a John Armstrong Esq. settled in a fine big house in Dawson Street. Doubtless there was some connection. As it was obvious that Watson was determined to think of Anne Armstrong as an orphan, in spite of the fact that the lady was approaching forty years of age, he kept his thoughts to himself. ‘A letter will come soon enough,’ he said. ‘Depend upon it.’ He suggested that Watson should visit old friends while he had the opportunity.

  ‘I have few friends,’ said Watson. ‘And none that I wish to see at this crucial time.’

  He was speaking the truth. He hardly thought of anyone as his friend, although he was aware that several people, Mandell for one, considered him as their friend. In England, there was the Revd Mr Harcourt of Eltham, and Mr and Mrs Crawley of Maidstone who had looked after him when he had been attacked and robbed on the common by marines, but all three were elderly and more like relations than agreeable companions. He had known them for years, ever since he had been taken on as an assistant teacher at Charles Burney’s school in Greenwich. Mrs Crawley had fed him and washed his shirts and done the things he supposed a mother did for a son. The Revd Mr Harcourt had lent him books and warned him not to gesture so flamboyantly when he talked.

  At Trinity College he had been too busy studying to bother whether he was popular or not. He was determined to make something of himself, to get on in the world. He was already thirty years old and he hadn’t the time to waste on fooling about under the trees in Phoenix Park arguing politics, or to run round St Stephen’s Green after midnight in nothing but his shirt. He was as poor as a man from Connaught and he wasn’t going to squander his money on excursions into the mountains or afternoons at the theatre – he hadn’t the slightest idea who had persuaded him to call at Mrs Curran’s in Marlborough Street. He did remember that Quin had taken him to visit Isaac Butt, editor of the Dublin University Magazine, at his rented house in Eccles Street, but that was stimulating and the right sort of people frequented the place. Ferguson went there, and Connor, and Lever had been known to sleep on the sofa when he was in town. In the back room was an organ said to have belonged to Handel. Butt was always in debt and the instrument was hidden under an old curtain lest the bailiffs suddenly arrive. Butt was a great man for parlour tricks – Quin said he had attempted to levitate Connor and had actually raised him as high as the mantel-shelf, only it necessitated the rest of the company singing hymns and they had been too drunk to keep it up. Connor had fallen and hit his head on a footstool. Once, Watson had gone there without Quin. Butt was out, and Mangan, the poet, was sitting there with an old woman who did nothing but belch. Mangan wore a flax-coloured wig and green spectacles. His false teeth were said to be borrowed from his sister. Caught between the clacking and the belching, Watson had found himself unable to utter a word.

  Deep down, he did not even think of Quin as his friend. Last August Quin had been there to cheer him on when he had come over to receive his Master’s degree, and that was friendly of him, as was the hospitality he unfailingly showed, but if feelings entered into such an arrangement then they were all on Quin’s side. For his own part, years passed and he never gave Quin a thought.

  ‘Do you suppose,’ he asked Quin worriedly, ‘that Miss Armstrong is ill, or that she’s been advised against me?’ Days were passing and nothing was settled. Soon he would have to return to England for the start of the Easter Term. He couldn’t bear the waiting, the inactivity. Quin said he supposed neither. He tried to persuade Watson to go out with him, but he wouldn’t budge, even when told that Duffy, the bookseller at the Quays, had come into possession of some rare editions previously in Lord Allen’s library at Stillorgan.

  ‘A letter might come when I was out,’ he said. ‘I have to be here.’

  Nor did he perk up when Quin, hoping to divert him, attempted to repeat the anecdote concerning the legal wit, John Philpot Curran, who, pleading before his friend Yelverton to a jury of illiterate shopkeepers, had quoted two lines in Latin purporting to have come from the Phantasmagoria of Hesiod, a non-existent work. ‘Yes, yes,’ said Watson wearily. ‘It was all Greek to the jury.’

  It was true that he had heard the story many times before, but then never before had he failed to be amused by it. Perhaps, thought Quin, he was unpleasantly reminded of the reception of his own work, Geology – A Poem in Seven Books, recently published by Pickering. The Athenaeum had given it a scathing review: ‘A didactic poem in blank verse, written as we learn from the dedication to Lyell, on the geological principles which he has so ably established and illustrated. The idea is absurd – as there is no poetry, and scarcely an attempt at poetic diction in the whole wor
k.’ The book had been printed at Watson’s own expense, and Lyell, the recipient of a free copy, had so far ignored it.

  There was no further talk of Miss Armstrong between the two men. When Watson was not at the dinner table – Quin noted that his appetite was unimpaired – he sat by the fire in the front room, occasionally jumping up when he fancied he heard a knock at the hall door, and now and then poking the coals so absent-mindedly that his host was afraid he would scatter them across the hearthrug and set the house ablaze.

  In repose, Watson’s expression was serious, even severe, but when animated by argument or enthusiasm his features reflected his thoughts to a startling degree. The most private of men, he made an exhibition of himself. Quin had never forgotten seeing him on the steps of Trinity Library, thrashing out some theological point with his tutor. His grimaces – the exaggerated lifting of his eyebrows, the rolling of his prominent eyes, above all the peculiar way in which he stood on one leg like a stork in a swamp – had caused a crowd to gather. Conversely, when depressed, as he now was, his face was stamped with such savage gloom and his whole demeanour so expressive of despair that those who didn’t know him could be excused for thinking he was mad. Fortunately Quin was used to him. They had met during the Hilary Term of ’36 when both had contributed some verses to the Dublin University Magazine. He was neither amazed nor offended by the behaviour of his guest.

  None the less he was relieved when a letter finally arrived from Miss Armstrong. She wrote that she was unable to receive Mr Watson at her lodgings, for reasons which I do not have to put into words, and inquired whether there was a Mrs Quin residing at Clare Street. If this was indeed the case, as she was led to believe it might be, was it possible that Mrs Quin might allow them to renew their acquaintance in the surroundings of a more peaceful establishment? She would not dream of making such a request, she wrote, if circumstances were not against her. Tomorrow would be a suitable time, morning or afternoon.

  No sooner had the note been delivered than Mrs Quin, senior, happened to call on her son with a gift of preserved fruit. Urged on by Watson, who was in a state of excitement, Quin told her of the dilemma in which they found themselves. Mrs Quin was intrigued and said she would come the following day to assist in welcoming Miss Armstrong. ‘Cissie’s children are dear little things,’ she said, ‘but they climb over me as if I were a boulder. I shall be glad to be out of the house.’

  Watson thanked her so profusely and shook her hand so often, that later, when he had gone to his room to read over his letter in privacy, she told her son she felt exhausted. ‘Is his leg damaged?’ she asked.

  ‘Both legs are sound,’ said Quin. ‘It’s a mannerism he has. Having made his own way in the world he is not always easy in company. But he is a good man.’

  ‘I feel it,’ said Mrs Quin and added, ‘He doesn’t seem to have learnt to hold anything back.’

  ‘He is certainly very emphatic,’ Quin agreed.

  His mother secretly thought that ‘strange’ might be a more descriptive word; yet, in spite of Mr Watson’s disconcerting habit of cracking his knuckles during conversation, she couldn’t help knowing there was something compelling about him. Through no fault of his own, as she afterwards confided to her daughter-in-law, he inspired affection.

  Watson went to bed early that evening. He had meant to scribble a few lines to Mandell and Hardy, but he couldn’t settle to it.

  Before he had left for Euston Square, Mandell, accompanied by the School Secretary, Henry Grey, had knocked at his door to wish him well. ‘If it wasn’t for the holidays,’ Mandell had said, ‘Hardy would be here too. I’m sure of it.’ Watson had felt bemused by the evident good will flowing in his direction. He had even allowed Grey to shake him by the hand, though he didn’t care for the man and disliked the idea of his being party to the more private details of his life. Apart from Quin, whose help had been essential in locating Anne Armstrong, he hadn’t intended anyone to know of his future plans. Once too often, over breakfast, he had brought up the question of marriage, in a roundabout way, and then, of course, the letters had begun to arrive almost daily from Ireland. Mandell had put two and two together, and next Hardy had been consulted, and soon every master at the school was giving his opinion on the subject, asked or not. He was surprised at how little he minded.

  Mandell had offered to go with him to the station. ‘It would give me pleasure,’ he said, ‘to see you safely aboard the train.’ He had fluttered his fingers in the air as though waving a handkerchief. Watson had refused his offer, perhaps churlishly, but it was not yet five in the morning, and bitterly cold, and he was sure that Mandell, who took the Modern class, didn’t possess an overcoat. When they left he had shut the door so firmly on them that the fox terrier in the cellar had woken and set up a howl.

  Why, he asked himself, as he undressed for bed, did he concern himself with Mandell at such a time. No doubt Tulley, the drill sergeant, disturbed by the barking of the dog, had come roaring out in his nightshirt to complain of the noise, but it was of little importance. He would write to both Mandell and young Hardy when he was in a less nervous frame of mind. Curiously, though he spoke her name out loud, several times, he could not think of Anne Armstrong.

  Once in bed he found it difficult to sleep. It wasn’t unusual for him, and he took up a volume of Bishop Warburton’s letters to his lackey Hurd which lay on the bedside table. No sooner had he begun to read than his mind wandered. At first he was thinking about his hair – he was still able to pick out various words on the page – and the dismay he had felt at the barber’s shop when he saw what quantities of it lay sheared on the towel about his shoulders, and then he fell to worrying about his teeth. Since childhood he had suffered from toothache: it would be a catastrophe if they played up when he saw Miss Armstrong. Pain in the mouth could be guaranteed to swamp every noble feeling known to man.

  He was lying there, tugging at a lock of his hair to make sure it concealed the scar on his temple, one thought following another, when quite suddenly a memory which he had believed buried forever bobbed abruptly to the surface.

  He was in a wood, in Dartford, with boys older than himself. One of them led him by the hand. He had a stalk of wheat between his teeth. There were midges spiralling above his head and the trees were so thickly in leaf that the sky was blotted out. He was afraid and dragged behind, and every few steps the boy jerked at his hand, forcing him to trot. A spider’s web broke against his face. He clawed the strands from his cheek and felt something scuttle through the roots of his hair. If he had not been gripped so tightly he would have screamed and pulled away. As if in a nightmare, he jolted beneath the sticky trees, torn at by brambles. Presently they came to a clearing in which a solitary pheasant strutted in sunshine; its legs were the colour of marigolds and there was a little tuft of moss caught in its beak. The boys halted and he stopped too, though he was no longer held, his fist pressed to the stitch in his side. The bird continued to strut and peck. Reared by the gamekeeper, it was as tame as a house cat. The biggest boy – he had a bald patch on his scalp from the ringworm – threw a handful of peas on to the ground. Against the grass they were scarcely visible. Each pea was threaded onto a short length of coarse hair docked from the tail of a pony and coated with wax to make it stiff. The pheasant dipped its neck and gobbled at the undergrowth. All at once it flew straight up in the air, wings beating, and then plummetted downwards, and rose, and flopped again like a bundle of rags, until, spent and earthbound, it began to stagger round and round the clearing, neck stretched out as if drawn on a string, feathers flashing emerald-green in the sunlight, tail raking the grass. A man’s voice was heard calling in the distance. Closer, a second voice replied. As if blown apart by the wind, the boys scattered and ran.

  Watson sat upright in the bed. He could hear the hiss of the gas as it flared in the mantel on the wall behind him. For the life of him he couldn’t turn his head. The recollection of that August day was so vivid – the sense of place, the sense
of fright – that he actually felt an obstruction in his throat.

  Watson had ordered a carriage to be sent for Miss Armstrong. There was some muddle over the time and she was fetched an hour earlier than expected – Mrs Quin had not yet come and Quin was upstairs. It was just as well perhaps, for otherwise Anne might have mistaken Quin for Watson.

  He was standing with his back to her, looking down at the fire, when she was shown into the room. The width of his shoulders made him appear shorter than he was. Above his head hung a painting of a ship going down in mountainous seas. When he turned round from the fire she thought he was a shade pompous, a shade dandified. He was also a complete stranger.

  She knew that her first impression of him was important. Soon, feeling and familiarity would alter her perception of him. Never again, after today, would she see him as he was.

  He was older, stouter than she had imagined, and he had a snub nose. His hair was a gingery colour. For such a powerfully built man he had surprisingly small hands and feet. Though he was clothed entirely in black, save for the white stock at his neck, he looked more like a prize fighter than a schoolmaster.

  She herself had dressed deliberately in dark grey. It was in fact her only dress, but if a whole wardrobe had been at her disposal she would have chosen no other. She had felt instinctively that Watson wouldn’t be the sort of man to notice what she wore, unless it was garish enough to be intrusive and then he would think it vulgar.

  Watson, for one brief moment, saw an insignificant little woman standing there with a handbag dangling from her wrist. Then he moved forward to greet her and took her hand in his, and she looked at him without smiling. Perhaps she was fuller in the face than he remembered, and bulkier in figure, but her eyes were unchanged and when she spoke he recognised that same husky intonation of voice which he had picked out above all others in that crowded drawing-room in Marlborough Street.