Honeybath's Haven

by Michael Innes

  ‘I see.’ Honeybath felt that he saw a good deal. He was in the presence of the Mad Scientist of popular fiction. ‘Might it not be possible so to refine upon your device that success could infallibly beachieved straight from the tee? Golf has always seemed to me rather a slow affair. You are to be congratulated, sir, on an invention that will so notably speed up the game.’

  ‘Precisely. But, of course, there are other possibilities.’ The features of the inventor of the transistorized golf-ball suddenly transformed themselves into an expression of extreme cunning. ‘Employed with restraint and discretion, my device would pretty well put the Open Championship within the grasp of any moderately competent player. It is conceivable that I may myself be that personage. The idea has attracted me since boyhood.’

  Honeybath thought that this was probably true. He also thought that he had handled a potentially difficult situation with tolerable address. But this didn’t mean that he wanted to spend his declining years humouring lunatics. If one was prepared to do that one could get paid for it as some sort of keeper or attendant in a madhouse. He wasn’t yet clear that Hanwell Court was entirely, or even preponderantly, such a receptacle. It certainly sheltered a number of persons of markedly idiosyncratic tastes. But there was nothing very wrong with that. In the present age, when nearly everybody was being dismally pulped into a replica of everybody else, an institution standing up for oddity had much to commend it. Honeybath (who believed himself to be a stoutly unconventional type) wasn’t going to come to premature conclusions. He bade the talented inventor of the homing golf-ball a cordial farewell, and walked on.

  There was much that had to be judged entirely agreeable. The gardens were maintained in admirable order, and were so extensive and at the same time so variously secluded that any number of strollers could suppose themselves to be in solitary possession of the entire terrain. One could imagine the park to be one’s own as well – and the house itself, for that matter, which every now and then appeared in one stately aspect or another as the various vistas on it opened up. This fictitious sense of ownership, although patently absurd, was surely innocent, and if one could pay for it among other amenities – well, why not? One can’t extract such a feel from a ‘luxury’ hotel, and here it was on tap for approximately the same money.

  Honeybath, although certain that he wouldn’t care to live permanently in this childish state of mind, found it amusing to luxuriate in for a few moments now. He was moving down the central path in an area somewhat formally conceived in the Italian taste, with high, square-clipped hedges on either hand, and here and there niches carved out of the foliage and framing miscellaneous stone urns, coffers, and blurred and eroded pieces of garden statuary. The vista, which was comparatively short, was closed by a well-proportioned little structure consisting of a circle of Ionic columns and a low domed roof. This frankly useless object, which would scarcely have afforded shade for a single garden chair, struck Honeybath as wholly pleasing, and he determined to walk on and round it before returning to the house. He had moved on a few yards, and was reflecting again on the ease with which solitude could be gained here, when he became aware that he wasn’t in solitude after all. A figure had emerged from the scant shelter of the temple (or whatever it was conceived to be) and was now moving towards him. It was a man who could be distinguished as in middle age; and that he was attired with a somewhat obtrusive appropriateness to his rural situation could be inferred from his wearing (prematurely, as the season went) an immaculate Panama hat. Honeybath noted this, was conscious of the man hesitating for a moment, and then saw that he was again contemplating nothing but the natural scene – or the natural scene as straightened out, lopped, and elegantly adorned by human agency. The man in the Panama hat had vanished.

  Since there appeared to be only unbroken and impenetrable walls of greenery on either hand between the temple and the spot where Honeybath stood, this was distinctly perplexing. The explanation appeared, however, when he had moved on a further dozen yards and discovered a narrow aperture in the hedge, undetectable until one was hard upon it. The man with the hat must have dodged quite rapidly through this. It wasn’t Honeybath’s business to follow and investigate. Nevertheless, he did so – merely because there lurked in him an impulse of juvenile curiosity which was always liable to bob up on sudden challenge. He walked through the gap, and confronted another hedge. He turned to his right, and yet a further hedge was before him; he turned again, and immediately realized what he had stumbled upon; he was in a cunningly designed and planted maze of a kind the best-known example of which in England is to be found at Hampton Court.

  To seem to pursue a perfect stranger into the heart of such a contraption was highly unbecoming, and Honeybath at once endeavoured to beat a retreat. Unfortunately he moved in too rapid and unconsidered a fashion, with the result that he lost his bearings at the start, and was instantly as disorientated as if he were already halfway through the labyrinth. He took yet another turn, and found himself directly at gaze with the man in the Panama.

  The situation was perhaps a little awkward, but ought not to have been actually embarrassing. Yet it was just that. For the man’s attitude and expression rendered an impression of apprehensiveness and indeed alarm. And Honeybath had just registered this disconcerting fact when the man dodged aside – it was the only word for it – and once more vanished.

  Honeybath wondered if the situation would be improved were he to call out a polite good morning. He had to judge that it would not. That he had actually pursued this inoffensive person into the maze was a fact impossible to disguise. He must simply continue his effort to emerge from the wretched thing, and trust that chance would not in the process produce a renewal of the rencounter.

  But it may be called the general principle of a maze that it is easier to get in than to get out. Honeybath turned hither and thither, but to no avail. It was a curiously upsetting experience. He began to feel a little like a rat under the invisible dispassionate gaze of some member of the investigating classes – or if not this, at least a lobster in a pot. He had to repress an irrational impulse to tear or claw himself out of the place in a fashion that would have been destructive to the whole device, ruinous to his attire, and even scarifying to his person. He had just broken into a blundering run, as if persuaded that mere impetus would solve his problem, when a voice addressed him as from the heavens above. He halted, looked upwards, and became aware of a species of gazebo erected just beyond the perimeter of the maze. Only its upper platform was visible, and on this the head and shoulders of the man addressing him.

  ‘Easy, sir!’ this person said soothingly and indulgently. As he spoke he respectfully removed a cloth cap, a gesture from which Honeybath inferred that this Ariadne-figure, coming to the rescue, as it were, of her beloved Theseus, was in fact a gardener. ‘Would you be wanting still to get to the centre?’ this person went on, when apparently persuaded that Honeybath was again reasonably composed. ‘There’s a cage with some very pretty parakeets – very pretty indeed, and well worth a visit.’

  ‘Confound your parakeets!’ Honeybath said, not very civilly. ‘I want to get out.’

  ‘Then just turn round, sir, and do as I say.’ The man on the gazebo sounded a shade hurt in his mind. ‘You’re no distance from the entrance, no distance at all. Straight on until you can turn right, sir. That’s it. Go on until you can turn left. A nice morning for a stroll, wouldn’t you say? That’s it! Left again now, and you might say freedom is before you.’

  In this somewhat ignominious way, Honeybath escaped from the maze, and found that Ariadne had descended from her perch and was awaiting him.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I was a little short with you about the birds. I’ve no doubt they are delightful. But I had no notion of threading the thing. My entering it at all was – um – inadvertent.’

  ‘Just that, sir. And a maze is rather a flustering place.’

  ‘No doubt.’ Honeybath didn’t enjoy being
detected as having become flustered in so absurd a fashion. ‘By the way, do you happen to have seen a man in a big white hat?’

  ‘Ah, him! He’s one of the shy ones, he is.’ The gardener again spoke on his indulgent note. At the same time he looked at Honeybath appraisingly, as if estimating whether he was to be placed in the same category. ‘Would you just have come into residence, as they say?’

  ‘No, nothing of the kind. But I have an appointment at the house, and it looks as if I may be late for it.’ Honeybath found he didn’t want to prolong this humiliating episode. He wondered whether he ought to tip his rescuer. It was unlikely that the inmates of Hanwell Court went around handing out sums of money in return for small services, but his own position as a casual intruder was somewhat different. He decided that Ariadne would take no exception to the cost of a couple of pints, and acted accordingly. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said again. ‘Perhaps I’ll see the birds on another occasion. Meantime, good morning to you.’

  As he walked away he found himself thinking not about the gardener but about the man in the Panama. Was he among those of the inmates whom a tactful meiosis would describe as disturbed? Curiously enough, he felt not. Although undoubtedly a shy one, he hadn’t given the impression of being off his head. Rather, he had seemed rationally wary, much as a displaced person in an unfamiliar environment might be. This was a perplexing notion, and Honeybath didn’t make a great deal of it. He walked on briskly, reached the front door of the house, rang a bell, and made himself known to the servant who answered it.

  6

  There was a small hitch. Brigadier Luxmoore (who was styled the Bursar, and was presumably the top man in an administrative way at Hanwell Court) had been called away on a family emergency, and had left Honeybath his apologies. Dr Michaelis, however, was holding himself available. Honeybath judged it legitimate to inquire what position Dr Michaelis held in the establishment, and was told that he was the Medical Superintendent. He had already gathered from his brochure, and indeed from what he had been told on his previous visit, that full medical and nursing services were on tap at Hanwell. Even when terminal illness befell you the place didn’t turn you out except in your coffin. But that it should actually support a resident physician seemed a shade disconcerting. If it didn’t suggest a madhouse (as at least some other evidences did), it at least suggested a sanatorium. For some reason Honeybath at once thought of the one in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. There was a Dr Krokowski there, who chatted you up on your complexes when he wasn’t tapping your chest. Perhaps Dr Michaelis was a psychiatrist. It was more probable that he simply went in for geriatrics in a general way. Honeybath wasn’t attracted by the notion of becoming a subject for the application of gerontology. He wasn’t that old yet. And he never wanted to be, either. Perhaps if he could read his own future what would be revealed would be a mercifully instant encounter with a bus. But that wasn’t to be relied on – which was why he was poking around Hanwell Court now.

  Dr Michaelis himself proved to be no greybeard. He was youngish, alert, and possessed of good professional manners. It was clear that he was accustomed to deal with more than medical issues when required, and that this familiarity extended to the behaviour of prospective clients cautiously obtruding second thoughts about closing with Hanwell Court. Honeybath noted with approval that he was far from pushing any objectionable sales-talk.

  ‘It’s entirely a matter of the times, isn’t it?’ Michaelis asked pleasantly. ‘Formerly, an elderly woman of some substance would continue to live in her own house, with a reliable servant or two, and a companion. A man like yourself would do something very similar; he’d have a flat or chambers conveniently placed for his club, and so forth, and a reliable man who’d cook for him and valet him and everything else. But for decades now the whole trend of social legislation has militated against all that. We have to huddle together if we’re to survive. That seems the long and the short of it. And here at Hanwell Court we try to provide the huddle without any positive squash. It’s expensive, and it’s going to become more so. But you’ve probably had the figures about all that.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Honeybath said. He was inclined to be favourably impressed by Michaelis’ frank avowal of the state of the case.

  ‘I suppose,’ Michaelis went on, ‘that most reasonably civilized people aren’t too keen on gross inequalities of wealth. But downright levelling and crude egalitarianism are another matter. It’s hard not to feel we’re being specially pitched on, wouldn’t you say, Mr Honeybath?’

  ‘I don’t know that I see it particularly that way.’ Honeybath was slightly surprised by this drift in the Medical Superintendent’s conversation. ‘Some are being impoverished more quickly than others, no doubt. But pretty well everybody is in for a bad time.’

  ‘Don’t you ever have a sense that unknown people – faceless men, as it has been very well put – are ganging up against you? That you must almost regard yourself as the victim of a conspiracy?’

  ‘I can’t say that I do.’ Honeybath’s surprise increased. He even felt a certain discomfort in face of the sharply appraising glance with which Michaelis had accompanied these questions. ‘And may we turn,’ he asked firmly, ‘to one or two more specific issues? It’s very probable, Dr Michaelis, that it would be my intention to go on painting.’

  ‘Ah! Yes, indeed.’ Michaelis was at once enthusiastic. ‘Titian is the great exemplar there. Went on painting far into his nineties. Splendid fellow!’

  ‘Titian mayn’t even have lived into his nineties.’ Honeybath was conscious of rather snapping this out – perhaps at being displeased at hearing a celebrated painter patronized in this way. ‘And my point is a simple one, Dr Michaelis. I’d have to be assured of a room with a good north light.’

  ‘But of course!’ The Medical Superintendent betrayed surprise that there should be any question about this. ‘At Hanwell we regard such matters as of the utmost importance. Everything must be done to sustain our residents in their sense of useful occupation.’

  ‘As with Lady Munden and her seaweed.’

  ‘Exactly so. How pleasant that you know Lady Munden.’

  ‘And Colonel Dacre and his rifle-range.’ Honeybath was about to add ‘And the man with the electronic golf-ball.’ But he reflected that here he had perhaps been made the recipient of a confidential disclosure, which he ought not to pass on. ‘I quite agree about the importance of having something to do in one’s old age,’ he said. ‘Knitting or chess or abstruse mathematical calculation: it all comes to the same thing, no doubt. With me it will be painting, as long as my eyesight holds.’

  ‘And, what is more important, your inspiration.’ Michaelis produced this comparative estimate with confidence. ‘I feel nothing is of more importance here than the creating of favourable conditions for the exercise of the artistic temperament.’

  Honeybath was rather at a loss before this. He supposed the chap meant well – but here, surely, was a whiff of sales-talk after all.

  ‘Don’t you feel it to be rather tricky ground?’ he asked. ‘It’s often under unfavourable conditions that what you call the artistic temperament seems to make out best.’

  ‘A most interesting paradox.’ Michaelis nodded gravely, with the air of an intelligent man properly open to instruction by an expert. ‘And I agree, of course, that inspiration is a most unpredictable thing. You hear its voice, and have to obey.’

  ‘Inspiration isn’t a voice. It’s a breath.’ Honeybath made the pedantic point a shade crossly, having grown rather tired of this conversation.

  ‘Ah, yes. But surely, Mr Honeybath, you hear voices from time to time – advising you to do a thing one way and avoid another? It’s a common trait among artists, I believe.’

  ‘I don’t think you believe anything of the sort. And the assertion is nonsense, in any case.’ Honeybath was suddenly very angry. ‘Dr Michaelis, please don’t take me for a fool. It may be your duty to assess intending residents here in terms of their nervous stabil
ity, or liability to neurosis, or whatever the jargon is. But spare me this fishing around for notions of persecution and auditory hallucinations. And I shall withdraw my application here, since I have clearly been misinformed. I had no idea that it has the character of a clinic for the mentally deranged.’ Honeybath rose to his feet. ‘And I regret that the misapprehension has resulted in my wasting your time.’

  ‘But it’s nothing of the sort!’ Dr Michaelis had sprung to his feet too, and appeared extremely upset. ‘And I do apologize Mr Honeybath, for having been so clumsy. It is perfectly true that I am obliged a little to sound the nervous constitution of our applicants. But the reason is this: we have to be careful to accept as residents here only a small number – you may call it a quota – of persons in any way eccentrically disposed. To take that small number, we regard as a social duty. And I assure you that, so far, our policy has been acomplete success. Our lives are so arranged here that nobody’s privacy need be invaded by anybody else, and such oddities as a few of our guests exhibit do no more than – how shall I express it? – make for interest. And the people who are a trifle strange benefit enormously from remaining in normal society under conditions so carefully controlled that it is impossible for them to be the slightest nuisance to anybody. That, quite simply, is the state of our case, Mr Honeybath. I hope, therefore, that you will reconsider the matter in the light of my remarks.’

  Charles Honeybath ought, perhaps, to have said ‘Damn your remarks, sir!’ and departed from Hanwell Court without more ado. This would have been uncivil – even unpardonable in view of the fact that Michaelis had gone to some trouble to explain the set-up within which he clearly made a perfectly honourable living. But at least it would have got the situation straight, since Honeybath for some reason now knew in his heart that he would never become an inmate of this curious establishment. But he was sensitive about his position. He had gone some little way in committing himself to the place, and now he had the appearance of shying away from it because it had been revealed to him that, on the most respectable grounds of social conscience and policy, it afforded shelter and support to a small proportion of harmless cranks. True, they were affluent cranks, and somebody made a profit out of them somewhere. But the arrangement was laudable rather than censurable in any way, and if he now bolted because it had been revealed to him he would in fact be doing injustice to his own tolerably liberal mind. His turning away from Hanwell Court as Honeybath’s haven was really prompted (a little introspection told him) by something quite different and not easily analysed or expressed. The place just wasn’t him. It had been revealed to him – to put it bluntly – that he’d rather end his days in a garret than at Hanwell’s opulent remove from the common traffic of life. But he couldn’t decently decant this feeling on young Dr Michaelis, and he decided (weakly, perhaps) that he must ease himself out of a false situation by temporizing means.