Gerontius

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘There goes Johnny.’ The two simian riggers were standing outside, oily hands on hips, watching the plane’s progress. A small dark puff formed behind it transiently and after a second or two they all heard the note of the engine blip before picking up again. ‘Bit of dirt there, I’d say,’ observed Fortescue as Johnny completed his circuit and landed. ‘Now, Sir Edward, I was going to insist on taking you up for a flip, give you a taste, you know.’

  ‘Oh I say.’ Edward swallowed nervously.

  ‘But I’m very sorry to tell you I can’t. The local brass won’t hear of it.’

  Edward’s disappointment was manifest. ‘Surely the authorities in a place like this can’t be too punctilious? I mean, a couple of bob in the right pocket … ?’

  ‘You might think so and in most parts of this continent I daresay you’d be right. But the Brazilians seem to be particularly sensitive about aviation. They say they gave us a government licence to do aerial surveys and aerial surveys is what we can do. Giving joyrides, even free ones, breaks the conditions of our contract. They’re quite surprisingly strict for a place stuck out in the middle of nowhere like this.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the reason,’ said Molly.

  ‘No doubt. At any rate they insist on our filing flight-plans before we fly, though I don’t imagine they’ve got much in the way of search-parties laid on. The whole thing seems to be connected with national honour somehow. They’re very put out because the Americans claim to have invented flying – the Wright brothers and all that. They say Brazil did it first, chap called Santos-Dumont. Don’t ask me.’

  ‘Well never mind. You surely mustn’t dream of risking your livelihood just to get me into the air. I don’t believe I’m dressed for the part in any case.’

  ‘He won’t even take me up,’ said Molly consolingly.

  But Edward was allowed to examine the aircraft and then to sit in the cockpit of Fortescue’s yellow machine. It hadn’t occurred to him that a pilot could see so little: the view ahead was of struts, wires, exhaust manifolds and an enormous propeller all pointing up into the sky.

  ‘How on earth do you steer the thing when you can’t see the ground?’ he asked. Molly was struck by the incongruity of the composer’s grey head peering nervously over the leather-rimmed edge of the cockpit as if he expected the machine to spring into life of its own accord and carry him helplessly off. She had to turn away to conceal her smile.

  ‘You look over the edge until you’re moving fast enough to get her tail up. It’s only a few yards. Once the tail’s up the forward view’s pretty fair; you’d be surprised.’ Fortescue was standing on a stirrup, holding a strut and looking down at him. ‘I know it seems like a glorified kite but you’d be amazed how strong all this becomes when it’s loaded. All these stays and everything are stressed for flight, for the wings to support the weight of the machine in the air. On the ground the whole thing just sags with gravity. Have you ever sailed, Sir Edward? Well, it’s quite like a sailing-boat. When the wind puts everything under tension the boat suddenly becomes alive.’

  But Edward was thinking more of his kites, how limply on the ground they lay like mere ideas for flight but how, once tacking up the sky, the wind put heart into them, tautened them, made them dart and sing. He was helped down from the cockpit and after a guaraná in the club house set off back to town with Molly. Once again they passed through the clouds of butterflies and once again Fortescue circled overhead. But long after he was back on board the Hildebrand Edward could remember as the morning’s strongest impression the smell inside the cockpit of high-octane aviation spirit, castor oil and cellulose dope. If the twentieth century had an incense which was not solely that of exploded cordite then maybe this was it. Certainly for the space of half an hour it had quickened his blood.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said to Molly, but fondly.

  ‘My friends, Sir Edward?’

  ‘My dear, I wouldn’t presume,’ he told her with genuine alarm. ‘I simply mean your work. It’s what chemists call the Litmus Test. Either your work comes first because it has to, or it doesn’t. Either you’re an artist, or … or …’

  ‘Or I’m a fake?’

  ‘Not at all. I meant something entirely honourable. Dilettante? Amateur? But those have the wrong connotations. Nobody has to be anything. Perhaps Molly Air is going to be someone who also paints pictures. And why not? I myself also used to compose music. Hard to believe, of course, about a decrepit globe-trotter with a microscope and a new-found interest in flying machines. We should all be different things at different times in our lives.’

  But Molly took away with her to her own cabin a morose feeling of admonishment which it suited her for quite some time to believe came wholly from her disgruntled companion.

  The next evening Edward joined perhaps thirty people, half of them British residents, for the Reverend Moss’s lecture at the Schiller Institute. He had already been introduced to some of the community’s elders, had lunched at the Consulate, dined at the Club. He was not sure of any of their names. They were more or less portly, more or less gaunt, showing to a greater or smaller degree the effects of long exposure to fever and gin. Of the two the fever appeared to have left a lesser mark except maybe for a certain shadow about the eyes which the fanciful might suppose to be mortal awareness. But they all, even the women, carried with them a bluff joviality, an aura of soldiering on.

  They were clearly disconcerted by the sudden appearance in their midst of Sir Edward Elgar. It was one thing to glimpse a stout foreigner promenading the streets of Manaos with a retinue, glossy mustachios and an ice-cream suit and be told reverently that the fellow in question was a world-famous Italian tenor. It only confirmed their notions of foreigners and music. But it was another thing entirely to find this soldierly gentleman who could have passed for a sporting peer drinking brandy and soda in their club and talking about the recent flat-racing season, when in most of their minds he was vaguely associated with Royalty and State occasions. Had King George himself stumped in from the jungle and asked their opinion of the last Cesarewitch they could scarcely have been put less at their ease. Besides, many thought, surely Elgar was dead? The composer? But he plainly wasn’t. He was here as large as life, sitting next to the German woman who ran the place. Bygones be bygones, of course, but it was all distinctly strange. As Vera Reynolds often remarked, one of the peculiar things about living in Manaos was that one never knew who was going to turn up. Each time a ship like the Hildebrand docked it decanted the oddest selection of people onto the streets and – frankly – into certain bedrooms now and then. If one lived in Calcutta or Rangoon or Singapore one could predict pretty much the types who would wash up from time to time: they varied little. But here … ‘Well of course, that’s what gives us the advantage over the Empire set,’ Vera had pointed out. ‘We commercials are so much more cosmopolitan, don’t you think, or don’t you? Far less insular, I always say.’

  If Edward had supposed that an hour’s talk about three hitherto unknown hawk-moths was going to be boring he was agreeably mistaken. The Reverend Moss was an excellent public speaker, unlike most preachers he had ever heard. He made a narrative of each discovery, an adventure of the hunting-trips which took him with muslin net and killing-jar into realms where most white men would venture only after a good deal of fuss and preparation and girt about with bandoliers. The hero of each story, somehow, was always the moth: a good sport who had put up a spirited run to evade detection and capture for so long. The prey was worthier far than the hunter. Whereupon the Chaplain handed round a series of airtight display boxes through whose glass lids his audience could see each specimen on its little cork Calvary. When it was over and everyone had shaken hands and said what first-class entertainment it had been (while of course transcending mere entertainment) Lena took Edward and her speaker aside.

  ‘You are my guests now. We shall go and have dinner. Not another word, please.’

  A horse-drawn caleça took them rattling down the cobbl
ed main streets and then more silently but lurchingly through unmade side roads where the wheels squelched through puddles and piles of vegetable matter. They rejoined a narrow paved road down whose centre a pair of steel tramlines gleamed in the moon. In a short while these stopped at a wooden shed. After a further fifty yards of slight descent Edward could see the building for which they were evidently heading, since it was lit by electricity. The mere fact that there was electricity available but that the houses and huts they were passing leaked only chinks of candlelight or the glow of oil lamps suggested they were in a poor quarter of town.

  ‘“O Caboclo”,’ said Miles Moss. ‘How very nice. Some time since I was here.’

  ‘This isn’t a place called Flores, is it?’

  ‘That’s right. How did you know, sir?’

  ‘Just something I’d heard. I must have remembered the name.’ But now he felt a jab of guilt: this was where he had half agreed to dine with Molly and Fortescue. The gharry stopped and they all got out and turned into the garden which had electric globes concealed about the shrubbery. These, by emphasising the darkness their light could not disperse, had the effect of making the surrounding vegetation press closely inwards. At once the Reverend Moss left the short path and began peering quizzically at the insects which whirled about each bulb. For a moment he looked a very English and parsonical figure, an elderly gentleman in a cottage garden examining a neighbour’s bees or roses. Edward felt sadly remote from the generation which roared about the sky in the heady scent of castor oil and cellulose dope. Three people past middle age dining in the shadow of their hobbies, he thought as he followed them in.

  If he withdrew a little in the early stages of the meal it was probably not noticed since Miles Moss talked with much animation while orders were given and things brought – such as the obligatory sifter of manioc flour and a tall electric fan on a stand. Both the Chaplain’s talking like an old friend and the glances of Lena (who after all was one) contributed to a feeling of disloyalty – disloyalty to a shade, to an era. Lena looked more at him than she did at the Chaplain, but there was something within him which rebelled against conniving at intimacy, against piling up betrayal. Besides, there was the heap of years which lay like a jagged Andean range between that time and this.

  ‘You were going to tell me about Dora Bellamy and Kate Hammond,’ he said when the wine had begun working and had brought him back to the surface.

  ‘Ah. Oh dear. I was slightly hoping you might not have remembered. My calling is rather against gossip. Or at least against bearing false witness.’

  ‘Bear a true one, then.’

  ‘I suppose the matter seems so well known. The fact is, Sir Edward, those remarkable ladies are … Might I enquire if you ever played cards with them?’

  ‘No. They asked me once or twice and I nearly did but something cropped up to prevent it.’

  ‘Perhaps then unless you’re a very expert player it was just as well.’

  ‘Oh? Good, are they?’

  ‘I’m told they make an extremely comfortable living out of it.’

  ‘Good Lord. Professional gamblers? That’s rather rich. What a prize pair!’

  ‘They work the boats, as I believe the saying is. This is one of the more lucrative cruise runs: many of the passengers between Europe and South America are people of some substance, and once away from land … Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.’

  ‘Aren’t the shipping lines wise to them?’

  ‘I should imagine so. But I’m told they quite often resort to disguises and assumed names. Really, one can’t help admiring their nerve, or ingenuity, or whatever it takes. Of course it’s infernal cheek, but all the same.’

  ‘Would they be married to those gentlemen we saw greeting them in Pará?’

  ‘Not English?’

  ‘Not remotely.’

  ‘In that case yes. You undoubtedly saw Felipe and Wanderley. A very amiable pair, I believe. Rogues, in all probability, but what of that? This isn’t England. As a matter of fact Kate and Dora and their respective husbands are well liked in Pará, even by the community. They’re beyond the pale, of course, but the pale here is by no means as fixed or as distant as it would be back home. They’re known to be good company and extremely kind and both ladies are after all well-spoken and educated. Some dislike them for exactly that reason, of course – backsliders and traitors and all that sort of thing. But mostly – well, we’re very relaxed here in Brazil as I’m sure you’ve gathered and it rubs off even on the British.’

  ‘I’m honoured to have met them. Though I must say I’m glad not to have lost my shirt to them. We composers are decidedly not in your category of people of substance.’

  ‘Do let me ask you about music in England, Sir Edward. I feel so out of touch here and so much must be happening. Does this fellow Stravinsky carry much weight there? From all accounts it’s rather barbaric stuff he writes.’

  But Edward’s gaze had become distant. ‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything. I haven’t been following things of that sort at all. Actually I’ve no further interest in music – haven’t had for years.’

  The Chaplain put down his fork in amazement. ‘No interest?’ he said. ‘I don’t … I can’t quite follow you, sir. You can’t have lost interest in music.’

  ‘Well I have,’ Edward told him shortly. ‘I presume one may get bored with what one has slaved at for decades? I’ve done with all that kind of thing. It can’t be so very difficult to comprehend. After all, it’s hardly unknown for priests to lose their faith as they get older and start to look at things differently. There suddenly seems to be so much else.’

  If the Reverend Moss was shocked by the sudden truculence he gave no sign. To Lena’s evident relief he merely said ‘Of course if you feel that way, Sir Edward, I perfectly understand. It must be tiresome if one is very famous always being expected to allow perfect strangers to pick one’s brains about one’s speciality. Please forgive me.’

  But Edward seemed unable to let the matter rest. ‘The point I’m trying to make, sir, is that it’s no longer my speciality. Never was. Merely a way of making a living – a dashed bad one, as it turned out. I bitterly regret having wasted so much of my time in so futile an enterprise. The entire British public as well as my friends tried by their attitude to warn me but I stupidly refused to heed them. My own fault, of course. Everyone was perfectly content to go on with their favourite diet of Sullivan and polkas and I had to stand up like a damn fool and offer them symphonies and suchlike. Well, they quite properly turned their noses up.’

  Even so the Chaplain was equal to this, evidently having realised that Edward’s abrupt change of mood had little to do with a dinner table in Manaos. ‘In that case Sir Edward I wonder if I could interest you in another road to immortality?’

  This was so unexpected Edward broke his fixed gaze and looked up in surprise. ‘You’re proposing to convert me?’ He even smiled.

  ‘No thought was further from my mind,’ admitted the Chaplain, also amused. ‘No, I was wondering about naming my new moths. One gets tired of seeing Mossii tacked onto the poor devils. Mightn’t Elgarii look well? Or Edwardii?’

  The crisis was past. ‘I’d feel a fraud,’ said Edward. ‘Not my discovery.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have to be. An association is all that’s necessary.’

  Edward was mustering graciousness, evidently mollified. ‘I’m sorry you should have dragged up that musical stuff. Now if only you’d asked me about microscopy …’

  ‘Ah, you’re a microscopist, sir? Had I but known. What I’d dearly love to be able to do is examine the scales from the wings of my specimens and devise a way of making them into photographic slides for my lectures. Have you ever seen scales under magnification? No? Oh, they’re the most beautiful things; like snowflakes, no two ever seem identical. Alas, I’ve no instrument of my own.’

  ‘I have one on board the Hildebrand.’

  �
��I say, have you really? You don’t suppose I … I mightn’t come on board for half an hour before you leave?’

  Edward was now expansiveness itself. ‘My dear fellow, of course. Spend as long as you want. Bring all the specimens you need. I shall be fascinated. Frankly, I look forward to it. This is a most interesting place and people have been – are being – most charming, but to tell the truth I’m not sure how to fill the time. It would be less of a problem were one here for a month, but a day or two – it’s too short for anything other than a kind of frustrated inertia.’

  Lena observed how carefully he avoided looking at her, heard the evasion behind his clubbish enthusiasm. ‘Let them,’ she thought resignedly. ‘Let them look at their moths together like a couple of schoolboys.’ But something not unlike rage or tears welled immediately up with the thought that it would be unimaginably absurd were she and Edward merely to wave to one another in two days’ time as to a friend going by in a train. Why wasn’t everyone equally desperate to make some kind of sense of it all before it was too late? To gather up such loose ends as could still be gathered? To make as much peace as could still be made with a former self and its ghosts? Might it not solace at least some of the spectres of ‘if only’ which she feared might be attendant on the end? No matter how messy and misshapen one’s life the grave would always be a perfect fit. Damn the man, safe on his magic mountain, blustering on about moths. She smiled and ate and smiled while her two guests discussed the problems of photography.

  ‘There’s a doctor here,’ Miles Moss was saying, ‘who thinks the absence of sunstroke in this region is connected with the low actinic value of light which makes photographing natural things so difficult. There’s no need to have any truck with the usual sort of hampering gear for one’s own protection: no green veils and smoked glasses and spinal pads, not even a cork helmet. But in quite moderate undergrowth I find I need an exposure of five or six seconds with a really low stop on the aperture to get any decent result, while in the jungle proper one really needs to double such values. It’s rare indeed that an insect will hold still for that long when there’s a lens pointing at it from a foot or two away, to say nothing of a perspiring Englishman trying not to breathe. As for one’s camera outfits, they all have to be cased in watertight mahogany lined with tin and the films themselves done up in tins and sealed with waterproof plaster. It’s a bit of a performance carrying all that around, especially since I like to work alone …’