‘Well,’ said his son, still smiling, but sharply. He was very angry. ‘One’s enough in the family. You’ve thought big till you bust.’
He didn’t mean to say this, because he hadn’t really the courage, but his pride was touched.
‘I mean,’ said the son, hurriedly covering it up in a panic, ‘I’m not like you… I…’
‘What did you say?’ said the old man. ‘Don’t say that.’ It was the smaller of the two faces speaking in a panic. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t use that expression. That’s not a right idea. Don’t you get a wrong idea about me. We paid sixpence in the pound,’ said the old man proudly.
The son began again, but his father stopped him.
‘Do you know,’ said the bigger of his two faces, getting bigger as it spoke, ‘some of the oldest houses in the city are in Queer Street, some of the biggest firms in the country? I came up this morning with Mr Higgins, you remember Higgins? They’re in liquidation. They are. Oh yes. And Moore, he’s lost everything. He’s got his chauffeur, but it’s his wife’s money. Did you see Beltman in the trade papers? Quarter of a million deficit. And how long are Prestons going to last?’
The big face smiled and overflowed on the smaller one. The whole train, the old man said, was practically packed with bankrupts every morning. Thousands had gone. Thousands? Tens of thousands. Some of the biggest men in the City were broke.
A small man himself, he was proud to be bankrupt with the big ones; it made him feel rich.
‘You’ve got to realize, old boy,’ he said gravely, ‘the world’s changing. You’ve got to move with the times.’
The son was silent. The November sun put a few strains of light through the frosted window and the shadow of its bars and panes was weakly placed on the wall behind his father’s head. Some of the light caught the tanned scalp that showed between the white hair. So short the hair was that the father’s ears protruded and, framed against that reflection of the window bars, the father suddenly took (to his son’s fancy) the likeness of a convict in his cell and the son, startled, found himself asking: Were they telling the truth when they said the old man was a crook and that his balance sheets were cooked? What about that man they had to shut up at the meeting, the little man from Birmingham, in a mackintosh…?
‘There’s a fly in this room,’ said the old man suddenly, looking up in the air and getting to his feet. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt what you were saying, but I can hear a fly. I must get it out.’
‘A fly?’ said his son, listening.
‘Yes, can’t you hear it? It’s peculiar how you can hear everything now the machines have stopped. It took me quite a time to get used to the silence. Can you see it, old chap? I can’t stand flies, you never know where they’ve been. Excuse me one moment.’
The old man pulled a duster out of a drawer.
‘Forgive this interruption. I can’t sit in a room with a fly in it,’ he said apologetically. They both stood up and listened. Certainly in the office was the small dying fizz of a fly, deceived beyond its strength by the autumn sun.
‘Open the door, will you, old boy,’ said the old man with embarrassment. ‘I hate them.’
The son opened the door and the fly flew into the light. The old man struck at it but it sailed away higher.
‘There it is,’ he said, getting up on the chair. He struck again and the son struck too as the fly came down. The old man got on top of his table. An expression of disgust and fear was curled on his smaller face; and an expression of apology and weakness.
‘Excuse me,’ he said again, looking up at the ceiling.
‘If we leave the door open or open the window it will go,’ said the son.
‘It may seem a fad to you,’ said the old man shyly. ‘I don’t like flies. Ah, here it comes.’
They missed it. They stood helplessly gaping up at the ceiling where the fly was buzzing in small circles round the cord of the electric light.
‘I don’t like them,’ the old man said.
The table creaked under his weight. The fly went on to the ceiling and stayed there. Unavailingly the old man snapped the duster at it.
‘Be careful,’ said the son. ‘Don’t lose your balance.’
The old man looked down. Suddenly he looked tired and old, his body began to sag and a look of weakness came on to his face.
‘Give me a hand, old boy,’ the old man said in a shaky voice. He put a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder and the son felt the great helpless weight of his father’s body.
‘Lean on me.’
Very heavily and slowly the old man got cautiously down from the table to the chair. ‘Just a moment, old boy,’ said the old man. Then, after getting his breath, he got down from the chair to the floor.
‘You all right?’ his son asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the old man out of breath. ‘It was only that fly. Do you know, you’re actually more bald at the back than I thought. There’s a patch there as big as my hand. I saw it just then. It gave me quite a shock. You really must do something about it. How are your teeth? Do you have any trouble with your teeth? That may have something to do with it. Hasn’t Alice told you how bald you are?’
‘You’ve been doing too much. You’re worried,’ said the son, soft with repentance and sympathy. ‘Sit down. You’ve had a bad time.’
‘No, nothing,’ said the old man shyly, breathing rather hard. ‘A bit. Everyone’s been very nice. They came in and shook hands. The staff came in. They all came in just to shake hands. They said, “We wish you good luck.” ’
The old man turned his head away. He actually wiped a tear from his eye. A glow of sympathy transported the younger man. He felt as though a sun had risen.
‘You know – ’ the father said uneasily, flitting a glance at the fly on the ceiling as if he wanted the fly as well as his son to listen to what he was going to say – ‘you know,’ he said, ‘the world’s all wrong. I’ve made my mistakes. I was thinking about it before you came. You know where I went wrong? You know where I made my mistake?’
The son’s heart started to a panic of embarrassment. For heaven’s sake, he wanted to shout, don’t! Don’t stir up the whole business. Don’t humiliate yourself before me. Don’t start telling the truth. Don’t oblige me to say we know all about it, that we have known for years the mess you’ve been in, that we’ve seen through the plausible stories you’ve spread, that we’ve known the people you’ve swindled.
‘Money’s been my trouble,’ said the old man. ‘I thought I needed money. That’s one thing it’s taught me. I’ve done with money. Absolutely done and finished with it. I never want to see another penny as long as I live. I don’t want to see or hear of it. If you came in now and offered me a thousand pounds I should laugh at you. We deceive ourselves. We don’t want the stuff. All I want now is just to go to a nice little cottage by the sea,’ the old man said. ‘I feel I need air, sun, life.’
The son was appalled.
‘You want money even for that,’ the son said irritably. ‘You want quite a lot of money to do that.’
‘Don’t say I want money,’ the old man said vehemently. ‘Don’t say it. When I walk out of this place tonight I’m going to walk into freedom. I am not going to think of money. You never know where it will come from. You may see something. You may meet a man. You never know. Did the children of Israel worry about money? No, they just went out and collected the manna. That’s what I want to do.’
The son was about to speak. The father stopped him.
‘Money,’ the father said, ‘isn’t necessary at all.’
Now, like the harvest moon in full glow, the father’s face shone up at his son.
‘What I came round about was this,’ said the son awkwardly and dryly. ‘I’m not rich. None of us is. In fact, with things as they are we’re all pretty shaky and we can’t do anything. I wish I could, but I can’t. But’ – after the assured beginning he began to stammer and to crinkle his eyes timidly – ‘but the idea of your being – yo
u know, well short of some immediate necessity, I mean – well, if it is ever a question of – well, to be frank, cash, I’d raise it somehow.’
He coloured. He hated to admit his own poverty, he hated to offer charity to his father. He hated to sit there knowing the things he knew about him. He was ashamed to think how he, how they all dreaded having the gregarious, optimistic, extravagant, uncontrollable, disingenuous old man on their hands. The son hated to feel he was being in some peculiar way which he could not understand, mean, cowardly and dishonest.
The father’s sailing eyes came down and looked at his son’s nervous, frowning face and slowly the dreaming look went from the father’s face. Slowly the harvest moon came down from its rosy voyage. The little face suddenly became dominant within the outer folds of skin like a fox looking out of a hole of clay. He leaned forward brusquely on the table and somehow a silver-topped pencil was in his hand preparing to note something briskly on a writing-pad.
‘Raise it?’ said the old man sharply. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before you could raise money? How can you raise it? Where? By when?’
Evelyn Waugh
MR LOVEDAY’S LITTLE OUTING
1
‘YOU will not find your father greatly changed,’ remarked Lady Moping, as the car turned into the gates of the County Asylum.
‘Will he be wearing a uniform?’ asked Angela.
‘No, dear, of course not. He is receiving the very best attention.’
It was Angela’s first visit and it was being made at her own suggestion.
Ten years had passed since the showery day in late summer when Lord Moping had been taken away; a day of confused but bitter memories for her; the day of Lady Moping’s annual garden party, always bitter, confused that day by the caprice of the weather which, remaining clear and brilliant with promise until the arrival of the first guests, had suddenly blackened into a squall. There had been a scuttle for cover; the marquee had capsized; a frantic carrying of cushions and chairs; a table-cloth lofted to the boughs of the monkey-puzzler, fluttering in the rain; a bright period and the cautious emergence of guests on to the soggy lawns; another squall; another twenty minutes of sunshine. It had been an abominable afternoon, culminating at about six o’clock in her father’s attempted suicide.
Lord Moping habitually threatened suicide on the occasion of the garden party; that year he had been found black in the face, hanging by his braces in the orangery; some neighbours, who were sheltering there from the rain, set him on his feet again, and before dinner a van had called for him. Since then Lady Moping had paid seasonal calls at the asylum and returned in time for tea, rather reticent of her experience.
Many of her neighbours were inclined to be critical of Lord Moping’s accommodation. He was not, of course, an ordinary inmate. He lived in a separate wing of the asylum, specially devoted to the segregation of wealthier lunatics. These were given every consideration which their foibles permitted. They might choose their own clothes (many indulged in the liveliest fancies), smoke the most expensive brands of cigars and, on the anniversaries of their certification, entertain any other inmates for whom they had an attachment to private dinner parties.
The fact remained, however, that it was far from being the most expensive kind of institution; the uncompromising address, ‘COUNTY HOME FOR MENTAL DEFECTIVES’, stamped across the notepaper, worked on the uniforms of their attendants, painted, even, upon a prominent hoarding at the main entrance, suggested the lowest associations. From time to time, with less or more tact, her friends attempted to bring to Lady Moping’s notice particulars of seaside nursing homes, of ‘qualified practitioners with large private grounds suitable for the charge of nervous or difficult cases’, but she accepted them lightly; when her son came of age he might make any changes that he thought fit; meanwhile she felt no inclination to relax her economical régime; her husband had betrayed her basely on the one day in the year when she looked for loyal support, and was far better off than he deserved.
A few lonely figures in great-coats were shuffling and loping about the park.
‘Those are the lower-class lunatics,’ observed Lady Moping. ‘There is a very nice little flower garden for people like your father. I sent them some cuttings last year.’
They drove past the blank, yellow brick façade to the doctor’s private entrance and were received by him in the ‘visitors room’, set aside for interviews of this kind. The window was protected on the inside by bars and wire netting; there was no fireplace; when Angela nervously attempted to move her chair further from the radiator, she found that it was screwed to the floor.
‘Lord Moping is quite ready to see you,’ said the doctor.
‘How is he?’
‘Oh, very well, very well indeed, I’m glad to say. He had rather a nasty cold some time ago, but apart from that his condition is excellent. He spends a lot of his time in writing.’
They heard a shuffling, skipping sound approaching along the flagged passage. Outside the door a high peevish voice, which Angela recognized as her father’s, said: ‘I haven’t the time, I tell you. Let them come back later.’
A gentler tone, with a slight rural burr, replied, ‘Now come along. It is a purely formal audience. You need stay no longer than you like.’
Then the door was pushed open (it had no lock or fastening) and Lord Moping came into the room. He was attended by an elderly little man with full white hair and an expression of great kindness.
‘That is Mr Loveday who acts as Lord Moping’s attendant.’
‘Secretary,’ said Lord Moping. He moved with a jogging gait and shook hands with his wife.
‘This is Angela. You remember Angela, don’t you?’
‘No, I can’t say that I do. What does she want?’
‘We just came to see you.’
‘Well, you have come at an exceedingly inconvenient time. I am very busy. Have you typed out that letter to the Pope yet, Loveday?’
‘No, my lord. If you remember, you asked me to look up the figures about the Newfoundland fisheries first?’
‘So I did. Well, it is fortunate, as I think the whole letter will have to be redrafted. A great deal of new information has come to light since luncheon. A great deal. … You see, my dear, I am fully occupied.’ He turned his restless, quizzical eyes upon Angela. ‘I suppose you have come about the Danube. Well, you must come again later. Tell them it will be all right, quite all right, but I have not had time to give my full attention to it. Tell them that.’
‘Very well, Papa.’
‘Anyway,’ said Lord Moping rather petulantly, ‘it is a matter of secondary importance. There is the Elbe and the Amazon and the Tigris to be dealt with first, eh, Loveday?… Danube indeed. Nasty little river. I’d only call it a stream myself. Well, can’t stop, nice of you to come. I would do more for you if I could, but you see how I’m fixed. Write to me about it. That’s it. Put it in black and white.’
And with that he left the room.
‘You see,’ said the doctor, ‘he is in excellent condition. He is putting on weight, eating and sleeping excellently. In fact, the whole tone of his system is above reproach.’
The door opened again and Loveday returned.
‘Forgive my coming back, sir, but I was afraid that the young lady might be upset at his lordship’s not knowing her. You mustn’t mind him, miss. Next time he’ll be very pleased to see you. It’s only today he’s put out on account of being behindhand with his work. You see, sir, all this week I’ve been helping in the library and I haven’t been able to get all his lordship’s reports typed out. And he’s got muddled with his card index. That’s all it is. He doesn’t mean any harm.’
‘What a nice man,’ said Angela, when Loveday had gone back to his charge.
‘Yes. I don’t know what we should do without old Loveday. Everybody loves him, staff and patients alike.’
‘I remember him well. It’s a great comfort to know that you are able to get such good warders,’ said Lady Mo
ping; ‘people who don’t know, say such foolish things about asylums.’
‘Oh, but Loveday isn’t a warder,’ said the doctor.
‘You don’t mean he’s cuckoo, too?’ said Angela.
The doctor corrected her.
‘He is an inmate. It is rather an interesting case. He has been here for thirty-five years.’
‘But I’ve never seen anyone saner,’ said Angela.
‘He certainly has that air,’ said the doctor, ‘and in the last twenty years we have treated him as such. He is the life and soul of the place. Of course he is not one of the private patients, but we allow him to mix freely with them. He plays billiards excellently, does conjuring tricks at the concert, mends their gramophones, valets them, helps them in their crossword puzzles and various – er – hobbies. We allow them to give him small tips for services rendered, and he must by now have amassed quite a little fortune. He has a way with even the most troublesome of them. An invaluable man about the place.’
‘Yes, but why is he here?’
‘Well, it is rather sad. When he was a very young man he killed somebody – a young woman quite unknown to him, whom he knocked off her bicycle and then throttled. He gave himself up immediately afterwards and has been here ever since.’
‘But surely he is perfectly safe now. Why is he not let out?’
‘Well, I suppose if it was to anyone’s interest, he would be. He has no relatives except a step-sister who lives in Plymouth. She used to visit him at one time, but she hasn’t been for years now. He’s perfectly happy here and I can assure you we aren’t going to take the first steps in turning him out. He’s far too useful to us.’
‘But it doesn’t seem fair,’ said Angela.
‘Look at your father,’ said the doctor. ‘He’d be quite lost without Loveday to act as his secretary.’
‘It doesn’t seem fair.’
2
Angela left the asylum, oppressed by a sense of injustice. Her mother was unsympathetic.
‘Think of being locked up in a looney bin all one’s life.’
The Penguin Book of English Short Stories Page 31
