Gerontius

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘Eccentric, Sir Edward?’ It seemed incredible that anyone should think such a thing about someone who looked so like a denizen of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.

  ‘It seems so. Because of a toad I was carrying in Hampstead. It was in the butcher’s. No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t got Gallic tastes. I was buying two chops but I found difficulty in getting my change out because I had this toad in a handkerchief. So I set it down on the counter momentarily although this did cause a good deal of squeakage among the butcher’s female patrons. Then a voice said “Ah, Edward, I see you’ve got your Sunday roast with you but who are the chops for?” and it was Algie Blackwood. I explained I’d been for a walk and had come upon these two boys with the toad and since I like toads and this one seemed unhappy in their company I bought it off them for twopence and was on my way back to Severn House to release it in the garden. Sort of thing anyone might have done, except that Algie happened into the middle of the story. So there and then I told him I’d decided to name it after him in honour of the occasion and in due course into the garden Algernon went. But I’m afraid the story got about, rather, and people started to think I was pretty much off my head. The butcher, especially, became noticeably cool although I didn’t mind that since he was a most inferior sort of butcher: wouldn’t even sell black puddings. The best comment came from Jack Littleton at Novello’s. He just said “H’m. Toad and Verklärung” which I think’s quite witty from one’s own publisher who’d give his right arm to be publishing Strauss as well.’

  There was considerable laughter at this but on the way back to the ship it occurred to him it was likely nobody at the table had had the least idea of what he was talking about. There was nothing like people’s failure to understand a reference which could so give one the feeling of having already stepped into a coffin whose lid they were purposefully nailing down bit by bit in small sections. Each day one’s own understanding of the world became more partial, the view a little darker. Yet only the occupant knew how astonishingly clear had become his vision of what was left. The clarity was one thing, the astonishment was for its lateness.

  Back aboard the Hildebrand Edward lay in the cool of his cabin and allowed himself to fall into doleful rumination brought on by the morning’s activities and the wine he had drunk. The business about fairies hadn’t helped, either; had let a vague disquiet edge in. It wasn’t that the new world of the Bright Young Things with all their extravagance and awesome silliness was so much more rational than the old, rather that a whole culture had become outmoded. A world ruled by Lyddite and phosgene and ‘Archie’ would have made short shrift of Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby, while Peter Pan would have had his own troubles in the trenches. Trying to look at it through modern eyes he could quite well see the ridiculousness of it all; but then surely it had never been more than a way in which people of a stolid race living in a stolid time had dealt with the whole uneasy business of childhood and, well, of the imagination, the poetic dream. True, the mode of expressing the vividness and anarchy of an infant’s vision might have degenerated a bit since Wordsworth’s day but … Or maybe … Who could blame those authors like Barrie and Algie Blackwood for doggedly holding out against the horrid tide of materialism, to say nothing of all those psychologists banging on about how the thoughts of children are really unspeakable? Modern grown-ups were indeed wumbled; and if regrettably they were no longer to be unwumbled by anointings with holy water or fairy-dust or stardust then …

  Into his drifting mind came snatches of the private language he and Alice had written to each other in the form of jottings, notes in each other’s margins, a language which if brought out into the light of day coram publico would frankly appear as baby-talk. It was insane, this black world. How could ‘Pease wite more dis booful music’ now lie beneath the inscription Fortiter et Fide? All too easily. He closed his eyes on such things, tears welling from beneath his lids, almost in exasperation at what was the whole of him and would not let him go, only to awake with a small jump and discover that two whole hours had elapsed. He had expected to find it mid-afternoon at the latest and the ship back at sea with Madeira a diminishing smudge intermittent behind a flapping Red Ensign. But when Steward Pyce came in as requested at four-thirty with a cup of tea the floor was not quivering with the power of Chief Stanford’s engines.

  ‘Are we not under way, Steward?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir. There’s been a slight delay. Something to do with one of our fresh-water tanks, sir. The Captain assures us we’ll leave by five-thirty at the latest.’

  Edward remembered something he had meant to do earlier but forgotten. The delay in starting was a bit of luck. ‘In that case would you mind very much getting me another bucket of sea-water, Pyce?’

  ‘Sea-water sir. Of course. But if it’s from the bows again I’m afraid I shall have to do it without your assistance: Captain Maddrell was quite firm about ship’s regulations, sir. Strictly speaking I shouldn’t have taken you so far forrard last time.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if I got you into any trouble.’

  The man has some imagination after all, thought Pyce. Few passengers in his experience would have bothered to draw such a conclusion. A not very strong feeling of indulgence for this old fellow allowed that, barmy or not, he was probably a decent enough stick.

  ‘I’d like it from the stern,’ said the stick. ‘Assuming we’re anchored head on into the tide or current?’

  ‘Very well sir; the stern it is. A whole bucket or just your hip-flask, sir?’

  ‘The hip-flask. Wait a moment.’

  His passenger took the flash from the desk where it stood among the mysterious wooden boxes, went to the wash-stand in the bathroom and could be heard rinsing it out thoroughly before returning and handing it over.

  ‘I’m much obliged.’

  ‘My pleasure sir. Before we sail, sir.’

  ‘Should I not be here kindly leave it on the desk.’

  Despite his relayed assurances it turned out to be not until seven o’clock that Captain Maddrell finally weighed anchor and sent a single abrupt C like a shell into the town of Funchal, its echoes rolling back from the facets of the mountain, the rocky slopes, the woods and crevasses which rose high into the dusk above it. The evening was not quite warm. The passengers hugged themselves at the rail as they watched a battered tug slew the Hildebrand’s head round so she faced 2,200 miles of empty ocean and nine landless days. The top of the island was cinnabar in the last light of a sun which had long fallen beneath their horizon. Edward was on deck with his cane and boater. He cut a dapper figure at the rail, standing a little apart or – Molly thought as she joined him – stood a little apart from.

  ‘I suppose captains never feel as we do each time they leave,’ he said as the bodegas of the waterfront slowly revolved and passed astern. ‘I’m never unaffected by departures.’

  ‘Nor me. The funny thing is I haven’t travelled very much by ship except across the Channel and the trip last year, but sailing out of a port on an evening like this I feel I already have a lifetime of leave-takings and journeyings behind me. Memories of things which never happened: how are they possible?’

  ‘It’s the melancholy that’s familiar. That always did seem ancient because one could never remember a time without it.’

  She abandoned her undiscriminating gaze to turn her head and stare sharply at the side of his face. ‘Would you describe yourself as a melancholy person, Sir Edward?’

  ‘Good Lord yes,’ he said in surprise. ‘Wouldn’t you describe yourself as one? I’ve never met an English person who was even slightly thoughtful who wasn’t a bit of a melancholic.’

  ‘You’re not happy, then?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it. One may be very happily melancholic: it has its own delights, as Sir Thomas Browne and Robert Burton well knew. But as it happens, no, I’m not happy. Nor can I think of a single reason why I might be. My wife is dead, my friends are dead, my music is dead. Only I, inconveniently, remain ali
ve. I shall continue to be so for an undisclosed length of time and for no discernible purpose whatever except that I’ve got to provide some idiotic music for a damnfool occasion at Wembley next April. That in itself is hardly an adequate reason for prolonging someone’s life. With any luck there may turn out to be a Supreme Being who agrees, but I know it’s unlikely. Not for nothing is he familiar as the Arch-Jester.’

  Somewhere far off, borne to them through a large metal duct like the horn of a gramophone bolted to the deck there came the sound of a bell and at once the engine’s beat increased. The boards began to vibrate under their feet and foam slid past the ship’s side with a rinsing hiss.

  ‘You’re silent,’ he said and she thought crossly that there was satisfaction in his voice.

  ‘What is there for me to say? I wouldn’t presume to try and talk you out of your view of your own life even if I thought I might succeed. I’d gain nothing but a deserved rebuff.’

  ‘Do I strike you as so very prickly?’

  Had he been thirty years younger Molly thought she might have identified a flirtatiousness in this question. But it was not in the least teasing nor even anxious, merely an enquiry of fact. The idea that he should care to know left a taste in her mind identical to the one which had provoked her outspokenness a couple of days before. There was something faintly disgusting about so famous and – in worldly view – so successful a man still insisting on having everything on his own terms: something of the child which devours the world it dominates. The self-pity was quite bleak enough to be acceptable, even to transcend itself. But it was odious to retreat behind inviolate grandeur or hooded withdrawal while reserving the right to emerge suddenly and demand assessment from a comparative stranger – more particularly as she was certain he would never normally dream of doing such a thing. She had never known the habitually reserved break their habit without seeming to surprise themselves, and this she found particularly distasteful. In fact the experience of nursing in France during the last year of the war had changed her irrevocably. The juvenile, undifferentiated kindness towards her fellow-men with which she had gone had been abraded – or at least refined – into something she valued enough not to bestow indiscriminately. Like many other nurses or professionals whose work is among suffering people she had acquired a fine recognition of the often modest symptoms of courage. Equally, she had an impatient category of her own: what she called ‘DBB’ or downright bad behaviour. She had coined this term herself, partly because she found she needed it and partly as a satirical comment on the despised pseudo-medical diagnosis of ‘LMF’. Now, five years later, Molly would never have dreamed of accusing anybody, no matter what the provocation, of lacking in moral fibre; but at this moment it did occur to her that Sir Edward Elgar was indeed capable of downright bad behaviour.

  Declining to answer his question she said instead: ‘My steward told me this ship was delayed because of a drinking-water problem.’

  It was Edward’s turn to look sideways at his companion staring down at the waters of Funchal harbour. Eventually he said, ‘So did mine.’

  ‘Well, I ran into Dr Ashe, the ship’s doctor – have you met him? Looks like a vulture and is wonderfully indiscreet. The whole story’s bunkum. The truth is exactly the reverse: the problem which delayed us all was quite precisely not caused by drinking water.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Good old drinking alcohol. It appears a few of our passengers, so relieved at having weathered the storm, went ashore to celebrate being alive with Madeira’s most famous export.’

  ‘Not cake?’

  ‘Not cake. They went to ground in somebody’s bodega at about ten this morning and the Captain had to send a party of crew-men with an officer to comb the dives of Funchal like a shore patrol looking for delinquent sailors. Dr Ashe said they were found at about three o’clock but they all wanted carrying.’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Edward with a suggestion of admiration. ‘Pie-eyed on Madeira for five hours. I hope the doctor has a good headache remedy aboard. Conditions down in Steerage may become a little unsavoury, too.’

  ‘They were all First Class passengers.’

  ‘Really? We’re turning out rather a lively lot, in that case. I wonder who they are? Presumably no-one at our table. What the Varsity types call “bloods”, I expect.’

  ‘And what I’d call drunks.’

  ‘You object, of course.’

  ‘Not on moral grounds; possibly on aesthetic. I’d call them drunks simply because they were drunk.’ Molly looked at him with great directness. ‘I don’t object just because I’m a woman, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Edward, who had indeed been thinking that, said ‘It’s silly our fencing like this.’

  ‘Quite. Incidentally, I did want to say that I completely agreed with what you said at luncheon. I mean your theory about photographing fairies.’

  ‘It was just an idea. I’m not at all sure I believe it myself, you know. But all of a sudden I couldn’t bear to let this hateful century get away with it once again – not without putting up some resistance. Nothing is avowed to exist nowadays unless it can be bought or sold or measured by scientists. Why should artists have to acknowledge the complete supremacy of materialism? Must everything mysterious be exploded or all unaccountable things explained away? And if so, what’s gained? Plain men drudging in a world of plain things. That’s not the world I know and it’s one I’ve no wish to know.’

  The distant bell rang again and the engines further increased their speed. The sound was suddenly reflected from behind and both turned to look across the deck towards the opposite rail beyond which the mole guarding the harbour entrance was sliding by only a few yards away. There were no old men and boys with rod and line around the squat stone lighthouse at the end. Instead a lone cat was sitting with its back to the ship, staring out to sea. The animal’s posture at once made it memorable: its motionless attention to the horizon was so complete that a seven-thousand-ton liner passing within yards was in another universe, a shadow crossing behind muslin. The cat ignored the Hildebrand and her two hundred souls, not with disdain but with a profound distraction. It sped past in unmoving meditation and diminished astern. As the distance and twilight increased Edward during the next few minutes stared back, with difficulty separating the receding lighthouse from intervening masts and davits to discern at its foot the black fur dot. Soon there was nothing of Funchal but a winking beam from the base of an indigo bulk sprinkled with lights. The moon which had been poised above the island that morning had not yet risen but in the limitless blank of unruffled turquoise sky the stars were coming out.

  ‘There’s no getting used to it,’ said Edward. ‘The beauty of this earth and its animals, and the barbarous wasteland man makes of it all. I don’t know why people aren’t more astonished by beauty. You must paint your jungle pictures with astonishment, Molly. As long as you put something of your own heart into them they’ll be exceptional.’

  ‘I certainly want to be original in the way I do them.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, remember what Ruskin said: “Originality is not newness, it is genuineness”.’

  ‘Did he say that?’

  ‘I seem to remember he did. An academic musician called Henry Hadow was fond of quoting it and he was a man of genuine unoriginality.’

  ‘You’re not fond of academics.’

  ‘I suppose some are all right. But finally it’s down to the heart and not the head. What’s the point of having so much knowledge and technique if it dissipates in cabals and rivalries and lectures?’

  Molly was struck by his vehemence. There was something so unsophisticated and raw but at the same time confident in what he said that with surprise – as if she had not realised it until that moment – she found herself thinking ‘The man actually is an artist throughout.’ She was impressed by the idea of someone in what she still thought of as an uncertain and marginal line of business being so used to his own idea of himself. It was even
exhilarating to hear somebody take for granted that living a creative life was not something which had to be accounted for. At this period her ideal was acquiring enough stature in her art that she would never have to be bluff or apologetic or furtive about it: no modest ambition for a single Englishwoman even in those enlightened days of partial franchise. Edward had with great casualness just displayed the very confidence she herself yearned for and her envy made him again remote and distinguished in her eyes. She no longer even thought of him as a man but as a person who had lived his talent and suffered in consequence. As if he had read this envy he said:

  ‘You can’t be in much doubt yourself. Even nowadays no young woman takes herself off alone to paint the Amazon jungle without being very certain of something.’

  ‘That’s no doubt how it looks but it’s not at all how it feels, I promise you. I wouldn’t presume to compare our talents but weren’t there moments at the beginning when you, well, had doubts? Did you never despair just once or twice? Even after what I assume was exceptional promise at college?’

  ‘Doubts? Despair? My dear girl, I’ve never been without ’em. At this moment I doubt a single thing I’ve done was worth doing and I despair of a life thrown away on something nobody needs or wants. As for my college, I’m a graduate summa cum laude of a cramped flat above a music shop in Worcester. The first time I ever had anything to do with a university was when I made the appalling mistake at the age of forty-eight of accepting a professorship at Birmingham. I needed the money. Disastrous. I never did loathe anything so much. Oh, and I’m forgetting Cambridge gave me some footling doctorate or something a few years earlier. I’m sure Birmingham couldn’t have made its offer had I not already got some letters after my name. Otherwise I contrived to keep myself remarkably unspotted and unstained by academic influence. I was far too busy writing music and trying to feed myself.’