Cucumber Sandwiches
Page 24
Firth found himself incapable of addressing his mind seriously to these issues. What did come to him as somehow formidable was the fact that he would be spending an evening alone. Normally he rather liked this; now he found that the prospect terrified him. Was this still because of Burbage – Burbage who, with a decent tact, was going to await the merciful darkness before marching up this drive and knocking on the front door? With a sudden clarity, Firth saw that it wasn’t so. The really dreadful thing had not, in fact, happened; and about what had happened Cyprian Windingwood was not the sort of man hastily to invoke the sanctions of the law. He was much more likely to contact Camilla and tell her that he had reason to fear her husband was unwell. This would be humiliating, but it wouldn’t result in his being put in gaol.
Firth came to a halt – as abruptly as if a sabre-toothed tiger or other prehistoric carnivore had sprung up in his path. For with one of those sudden jumps by which his mind now seemed to move he knew the true reason why an evening alone was going to be unbearable. It was because he would have company through it, after all – the company of Windingwood’s finger and thumb.
‘It’s that doodling and drawing,’ he said aloud. ‘It’s the beastly magic of—what did he call it?—the tail wagging the unwaggable dog.’ But something in his own voice told him that this was not the nub of the matter. It was true that Windingwood was a potent artist and he himself an artist manque; that through some weird psychosomatic vagary what had been grafted on his own right hand was capable of urging a habit and will of its own; and that a black comedy of frustration and jealousy had been spinning itself from this. But these things merely disguised something far more radical: the mindless, primitive sense of what constitutes a selfhood and its integrity. Firth had somewhere read that all civilisation is erected on man’s buried fear of being deprived of certain parts of himself. Perhaps there was a kind of inverse fear which had got hold of him now.
There is commonly supposed to be something therapeutic in successful self-analysis. It is an immemorial persuasion, indeed, and subscribed to by whoever caused the temple of Delphi to be engraved with the words γνώθι σεαυτόν. But immemorial persuasions are often quite wrong. And the scrap of self-knowledge which had come to Firth served merely to throw him into a panic. He found himself running up the drive of Spindle. But not to that gentrified and adequately commodious cottage itself. When he came to a stop again, it was in the tool-shed.
He had the hatchet in his left hand and his right hand (or composite hand) on the chopping block, when there was a sound at the door of the shed. Or was it a smell? At least it distracted him (no doubt he wanted to be distracted) and he turned to look.
He had been visited by one of Hayball’s goats. Goats belong, in a fashion, with panic, or at least they have associations with the God said to produce that disagreeable condition. But what this goat suggested was, on the contrary, a kind of animal tranquillity in which, it dimly came to Firth, much wisdom reposed. Had the interests of science squired, as they did now frequently require of the brute creation, some switch of limb or organ much more radical harm Firth himself had suffered, this creature would doubtless have made do uncomplainingly with whatever such a one as Sir Horace Rumford had provided. Firth – at gaze with the goat, as the goat with him – felt rebuked. He looked at the hatchet, looked at Windingwood’s finger and thumb, and wondered at the frenetic folly of what he had been about. He recalled that Origen, supreme among the theologians of the early Church, had lived to regret executing upon himself a retrenchment yet more drastic than he himself was proposing, and also prompted by what might be called a dislike of doodling. Moreover, Firth told himself, it wouldn’t be any good. He would simply be carried back to hospital, and Sir Horace would get going again. And with what might not the luck of the airport or the speed-track next equip him? He might wake up to find himself owning the finger and thumb not of an eminent artist but of an equally eminent forger, or a virtuoso exponent of some hideous instrument like the electric guitar.
There was considerable logical confusion in these thoughts, but at least they produced action. Firth threw down the hatchet, shooed the goat from the doorway, and staggered into the open air.
He found that he was making his way back to the village, but for some time he didn’t know why. Was he going to give himself up, as people said, to Burbage? No, that wasn’t it. On the contrary, he was engaged upon a sensible scaling down of the whole thing, and part of this process lay in realising that there wasn’t anything to give himself up for. He had suffered a mere brain-storm, and certainly hadn’t meant Windingwood any harm. If people got to know about the episode they would only conclude, perfectly justly, that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Such illnesses are extremely unpleasant while they last, but it is their chief characteristic that they are regularly recovered from. One is constantly hearing of people who have had such a breakdown; one hears this far more frequently than that people are having one. And this proves their ephemeral character.
Thus muzzily cerebrating, Firth reached the post office. He now knew what was important. He must convey to Windingwood with all speed an apology for his rude behaviour. It wasn’t that he wanted to propitiate the man, to head him off from taking legal action. It was simply that this was a civilised – you might say merely a gentlemanlike – thing to do. He would send a telegram.
A little bell rang above his head, and there was a smell of paraffin and liquorice sweets and cheap news-print. There was a small counter, one-half of which lay behind a symbolic little grille. The grille marked the post office part, and at the other part you bought shoe-laces and packets of tea and shiny halfpenny-sized metal disks for mending leaking pots and pans. The place was empty except for a man behind the counter. Firth thought he looked like a horse-fly. Or rather he thought nothing of the sort; he simply remembered that this was what he was expected to think. Everybody said Binchy was like a horse-fly.
Binchy. Firth stared at the man in horrified recollection. Binchy had a sheaf of papers in front of him, and was banging alternately on these and on an ink-pad with a rubber stamp. This was a routine Binchy went into when anyone entered the post office; the papers were mere waste-paper, but the action impressed you with the importance of his official status. After the little bell went he invariably did a dozen bangs before looking up. The grandees of the district got precisely the same treatment as village children wanting a toffee-apple. Binchy was a man of finely democratic feeling.
‘Ah, Mr Firth, good afternoon.’ Binchy had made his last bang. ‘Very pleasant to see you with us again, sir. Very pleasant, indeed. Quite recovered from your little operation, I hope.’
‘Yes, thank you, Mr Binchy,’ Firth said automatically. Everybody had, of course, heard of his accident and period in hospital, but ‘little operation’ suggested more information than there was any reason to feel Binchy ought properly to have. Binchy was not a perceptive man; it was unlikely that he discerned this feeling in his customer’s mind; and his next words were therefore less suggestive of apology than of complacent self-regard.
‘When one has associations in the highest medical circles, Mr Firth, one comes to hear of these things. And most interesting they are. Even, as you might say, the trivia, sir.’ Binchy paused on this learned word. ‘It was Sir Horace Rumford, I think? Quite a master, they maintain, of minor surgery of that kind.’
‘I suppose so.’ Firth’s feeling was less of indignation – although it was clear that within Binchy’s hearing some outrageously careless medical gossip had been going on – than of a confused bewilderment. This ineffably self-satisfied creature was the man down whose body must run a great scar like a zip-fastener; within whose flesh there beat.
Firth’s phobia (or whatever his regrettable vulnerability was to be called) rose in him, and it had the odd effect of prompting him to answer grossness with grossness and gel out.
‘The heart doing well, Mr Binchy?’ he asked.
‘And lungs, Mr Firth.’ Binchy w
as reproachful. ‘Shockingly inadequate, the reporting was – although I’m bound to say the newspapers paid very handsomely for my own reminiscences. And here locally, sir, you wouldn’t believe some of the slanders going around. Very malicious, often is village life – particularly towards those with a certain position, if you understand me. It wouldn’t apply, of course to a private person like yourself. Do you know, now? There are those who go about saying it was a black.’
‘A black?’ Firth simply failed to understand.
‘An immigrant or such like. Whereas the fact of the matter is that my donor was a young man of very good family. Of superior station, you might say, even to the people up there at the Hall.’ Binchy paused impressively on this claim to vicarious social eminence. ‘A college lad, too, Mr Firth, and very athletically inclined. But only taking that sort of thing in his stride, of course. Nothing to strain himself – nothing of that sort at all. A splendid constitution, they say. Now, what can I do for you, Mr Firth?’
For a moment Firth could find no answer. He did remember that he had been going to send a telegram to Windingwood, but he now realised that it would be a merely fatuous gesture. He had made a fool of himself, and wasn’t going to mend matters by spending half-a-crown. But he had to spend something, since Binchy was looking expectantly at him.
‘Stamps,’ Firth said vaguely. ‘I just want some stamps.’
‘Your usual ten-shilling book,’ Binchy said with authority. And he pushed aside a jar of assorted toffees and reached into a drawer.
Outside the post office Firth ran into the vicar, and they exchanged what he was blessedly aware of as perfectly normal greetings. Baxendale asked if Camilla was at Spindle. Firth explained she was in Paris. The two men were about to part.
‘That fellow Binchy,’ Firth said suddenly. ‘He takes it uncommonly quietly, doesn’t he? Thoroughly pleased with himself, in fact.’
For a moment the vicar was perplexed, and then he understood.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘The transplant. Yes, indeed. Like so much in life, these things are as one receives them, wouldn’t you say?’
Works of J.I.M. Stewart
‘Staircase in Surrey’ Quintet
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
The Gaudy (1974)
Young Pattullo (1975)
Memorial Service (1976)
The Madonna of the Astrolabe (1977)
Full Term (1978)
Other Works
Published or to be published by House of Stratus
A. Novels
Mark Lambert’s Supper (1954)
The Guardians (1955)
A Use of Riches (1957)
The Man Who Won the Pools (1961)
The Last Tresilians (1963)
An Acre of Grass (1965)
The Aylwins (1966)
Vanderlyn’s Kingdom (1967)
Avery’s Mission (1971)
A Palace of Art (1972)
Mungo’s Dream (1973)
Andrew and Tobias (1980)
A Villa in France (1982)
An Open Prison (1984)
The Naylors (1985)
B. Short Story Collections
The Man Who Wrote Detective Stories (1959)
Cucumber Sandwiches (1969)
Our England Is a Garden (1979)
The Bridge at Arta (1981)
My Aunt Christina (1983)
Parlour Four (1984)
C. Non-fiction
Educating the Emotions (1944)
Character and Motive in Shakespeare (1949)
James Joyce (1957)
Eight Modern Writers (1963)
Thomas Love Peacock (1963)
Rudyard Kipling (1966)
Joseph Conrad (1968)
Shakespeare’s Lofty Scene (1971)
Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography (1971)
Plus a further 48 Titles published under the pseudonym ‘Michael Innes’
Select Synopses
Staircase in Surrey
The Gaudy
The first volume in J.I.M. Stewart’s acclaimed ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet, (but the second in time), ‘The Gaudy’ opens in Oxford at the eponymous annual dinner laid on by the Fellows for past members. Distinguished guests, including the Chancellor (a former Prime Minister) are present and Duncan Pattullo, now also qualified to attend, gets to meet some of his friends and enemies from undergraduate days. As the evening wears on, Duncan finds himself embroiled in many of the difficulties and problems faced by some of them, including Lord Marchpayne, now a Cabinet Minister; another Don, Ranald McKenechnie; and Gavin Mogridge who is famous for an account he wrote of his adventures in a South American jungle. But it doesn’t stop there, as Pattullo acquires a few problems of his own and throughout the evening and the next day various odd developments just add to his difficulties, leading him to take stock of both his past and future.
Young Pattullo
This is the second of the ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet, and the first in chronological order. Duncan Pattullo arrives in Oxford, destined to be housed off the quadrangle his father has chosen simply for its architectural and visual appeal. On the staircase in Surrey, Duncan meets those who are to become his new friends and companions, and there occurs all of the usual student antics and digressions, described by Stewart with his characteristic wit, to amuse and enthral the reader. After a punting accident, however, the girl who is in love with Duncan suffers as a result of his self-sacrificing actions. His cousin, Anna, is also involved in an affair, but she withholds the name of her lover, despite being pregnant. This particular twist reaches an ironical conclusion towards the end of the novel, in another of Stewart’s favourite locations; Italy. Indeed, Young Pattullo covers all of the writer’s favourite subjects and places; the arts, learning, mystery and intrigue, whilst ranging from his much loved Oxford, through Scotland and the inevitable Italian venue. This second volume of the acclaimed series can be read in order, or as a standalone novel.
Memorial Service
This is the third novel in the Oxford quintet entitled ‘Staircase in Surrey’. Duncan Pattullo returns in middle age to his old college. The Provost is heavily engaged in trying to secure a benefaction from a charitable trust which the old and outrageous Cedric Mumford influences. One significant complication is the presence in college of Ivo Mumford, Cedric’s grandson. He is badly behaved and far from a credit to the college. His magazine, ‘Priapus’ proves to be wholly objectionable. Stewart explores the nature of the complicated relationships between the characters with his usual wit, literary style and intellectual precision and turns what might otherwise be a very common and ordinary situation into something that will grip the reader from cover to cover.
The Madonna of the Astrolabe
In the fourth of J.I.M. Stewart’s acclaimed ‘Staircase in Surrey’ quintet the gravity of a surveyor’s report given to the Governing Body is the initial focus. The document is alarming. The Governing Body, an assembly of which Pattullo was in awe, was equally awed by the dimensions of the crisis revealed. It would seem that the consideration was whether there would literally be a roof over their heads for much longer. The first rumblings from the college tower brings the thought well and truly home to Pattullo. ‘Professor Sanctuary,’ the Provost said evenly, ‘favours the immediate launching of an appeal . . .’ And so it begins . . . In J.I.M. Stewart’s superbly melding of wit, mystery, observation and literary prowess a gripping novel develops that will enthral the reader from cover to cover. This can be read as part of the series, or as a standalone novel.
Full Term
The final volume in the ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet. Duncan Pattullo is coming to the end of his term as ‘narrator’ and is thinking of re-marrying, although his former wife continues to cause difficulties. His intended is also providing gossip for the college, but that is as nothing compared to the scandal caused by Watershute, an eminent nuclear physicist. His misdemeanours range from abandoning
his family and conducting an affair in Venice, to being drunk at High Table. However, things get very serious when he appears to be involved in activities that might amount to treason. An interesting and convoluted plot, which is a fitting end to this acclaimed series, is carried forward with J.I.M. Stewart’s hallmark skill and wit. Full Term can be read in order, or as a standalone novel.
Other Fiction
Andrew and Tobias
The Feltons are a family with a long lineage stretching back beyond the Norman Conquest. They now have a daughter, Ianthe, but prior to her birth Tobias, or Toby, was fostered and then adopted as their heir after he had miraculously survived the sinking of a refugee ship by a German U-Boat. Then, someone who is clearly Toby’s twin turns up as an under-gardener. He had been fostered by a Scottish couple, now dead. There is now general and disturbed confusion on everyone’s part – including the boys themselves. Stewart explores magnificently the nature of the complicated relationships, including those from outside of the family such as Toby’s lover; the irony of the situation; and the many ramifications of class and culture in the absurd situation the characters find themselves.
Avery’s Mission
Bannerman is a schoolmaster on his way to Florence to do some research. On the plane, he meets a recent pupil, Avery Brenton, who is travelling to see his divorced father. However, Avery is young and naïve and is being unwittingly used by his domineering mother. Bannerman finds himself being drawn into matters. Avery’s father is working on a lifetime study of Italian art and is not that pleased to see him. Enter Mrs Mountpatrick, a friend of Avery’s mother, along with another youth who is helping his father. Very soon, a delightfully entangled and complex situation develops, only to be exacerbated by the arrival of Avery’s mother, a dominatrix who uses sex-appeal and a natural upper class manner to exert her will. The tale is told by Bannerman as narrator and is full of suspense to delight the reader right up to the unexpected end.