“Victoria Gross?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Mr. Nilsson, you can check this with the official records,” said Laura. “I am no longer content to listen to your sadistic shriving of conscience upon a dead man!”, and she got up to follow Phillip out of the room.
“Hold your horses!” cried Nilsson. “Fill the glasses, Mr. Corney! Now tell me, Mr. Corney, did you see anything on the night he went down in the sea, on his way back solo from New York and Gander?”
Laura returned. Mr. Corney stood at attention, while looking straightly at Nilsson. “As true as I’m standing behind this bar, I saw his Lordship’s black greyhound that he had put down a couple of years before he went to America! I saw the dog standing in the kitchen as clear as I see you now as when I was sitting by the hot-water boiler.” He looked at Nilsson and then at Laura. “I saw him as plain as I see you gentleman and lady standing there before me!” He began to tremble as he faced Nilsson again. “I swear my oath on it, sir! I was in the kitchen, by the boiler, and all doors shut. Then the black greyhound come through the wall, ears up, lookin’ for ’is master. Then it was gone.” He stopped, wiping eyes with back of hand. “That dog, sir, was put down before my master went to America! God A’mighty, may I die now if I speak the untruth! I knew then—I know now —he was gone down. I’d been listening to the wireless—he’d been seen by the Empress of Britain, flyin’ back to her Ladyship.” With piteous face, he appealed to Laura. “Every word is true, miss!”
“Were you on the bottle?” asked Nilsson.
The man did not reply at once. Then he said, “I’d had a nip or two. It was the strain of waiting by the wireless, sir. We was all standing by, to hear anything special.”
“Including Lady Cloudesley?”
“No, sir. Lady Ann was dead of a haemorrhage, at five o’clock that morning. And my gentleman come home just before dawn the next morning. It was then I saw the black greyhound, sir.”
“Tell me what else you saw, Corney. Have another drink first.”
“Not at the moment, thank you, sir. Well, sir, my lady’s old nurse, what was living with us, come down from upstairs and she was shaking so she could hardly hold the candlestick in her hand. She said her lady, what had died in childbirth that afternoon, and ’adn’t bin laid out then, was standin’ by the window, lookin’ at a big white star rising up over the hill.”
“The nurse said that?”
“Yes, sir. It was the morning star. I saw it myself. I was shivering with cold, so I went back by the coke boiler. Then Nanny, that was the old nurse, sir, was being called by little Hugh—he what is now his Lordship—and when she went into the night-nursery again the candles was burning blue in her Ladyship’s room as though in a draught, she said, but all the windows was closed.” He poured himself a drink. “If anyone ever saw ghosts, they were seen in our house that night.”
Laura shouted, “You’re not to say any more, Mr. Corney!” She turned to Nilsson. “You ought to know better than to pry into other people’s private worlds! Especially when you were told some time ago that ‘Buster’ is writing the biography of his father! I suppose you want to cash in first—everything is dollars with you Americans!”
“Hold your horses,” he replied, in a voice now lush. “In a democracy all news is for free.” He wagged a finger. “Don’t think I don’t know all about the plot to rescue Rudolf Hess from Spandau prison outside Berlin! You won’t get away with it! The Commies will see to that!”
*
Nilsson remained at The Marksman until an hour after closing time, talking at the landlord, who gave a remarkable impersonation of a man listening while sleeping upright with eyes open. At last Mrs. Nilsson arrived in the taxicab which was hired half-a-dozen times a month to fetch her husband home from some inn or hotel. Paying off the taxi, she took Osgood home in his prewar sedan smelling of goats and journalism. He was clutching the photograph of his Osgood grandfather late of the Confederate Army in the war between the Deep South and the Yankee North.
*
The next evening Nilsson was in high feather in what he called the ‘Zymes Club’ as he sat apart from those around the bar—a sprinkling of doctors, solicitors, and business worthies, some of them ex-officers of the late war recently admitted to what, before 1939, had unofficially been known as the Gentlemen’s Club—landowners, retired regular officers of the two Services, including those originally seconded to the R.F.C. and later transferred to the R.A.F., together with parsons, doctors and solicitors who had, generally speaking, served their interests.
Nilsson was tolerated as a ‘character’ in his ‘Zymes Club’; he felt himself to be several cuts above them—he, a writer of international reputation: author of books on travel, in which were described his meetings with prominent politicians, writers, artists thrown in with a measure of international financiers and crooks and a king or two. In fact, the books were a rehash of ephemeral journalism spiced by fishing and shooting experiences (some in poached preserves) in various parts of the world.
In drink, Nilsson was ready to enlarge on those experiences and to give opinions on world topics; but this evening, among the bar habituées who foregathered there after the days’ work, Nilsson remained silent; an odd bird in lush plumage, preening himself that he was on to a good thing in his new series of articles. He considered: what had the son of the late Manfred Lord Cloudesley to be so reticent about? What family skeleton was he keeping hidden? Why hadn’t the family, long ago, permitted an official biography to be put out? Could it be for the same reason that no biography of Colonel Lawrence of Arabia had been allowed by the trustees of that mysterious ‘hero’?
The Club was in a little house off the High Street. When the time approached for the steadier members to go home to dinner, Nilsson was still simmering happily alone, occasionally addressing, in his hammy voice, inconsequential, semi-inaudible remarks to one or another of the members gathered there to relax and hear the latest local gossip. To them, so far, old Osgood had remained comparatively quiet; but suddenly, throwing down the local paper with its announcement of Lynton’s forthcoming Festival of the Arts Week, when the Amateur Dramatic Society would produce Yeomen of the Guard, he fired the first rocket of the evening.
“It was Shakespeare who said, ‘Pistol’s cock is up, and flashing fire will follow’. Don’t mistake me, you Zymes nattering away over there! I’m not referring to your bogus Major Piston, who’s got a little-end loose.”
“How d’you know that, Nilsson?” said one of the topers, an articled clerk who was hoping to become a solicitor. “Is your own little-end loose, or is it a big-end, old boy?”
“Your Amateur Dramatic Society couldn’t even get stuck into ‘The Thirteenth Chair’, let alone ‘Yeoman of the Guard’. Your country of Devon is known in the publishing world as ‘the graveyard’.”
“Since you’ve come here, you mean, Mr. Nilsson?” asked the articled clerk.
“Piss off” said Nilsson.
“Is that what your New York editor advised you to do?”
After these fatuities, heads returned to the bar; but turned round once more at a cry from Nilsson, “You there! You’re a no-good man! You haven’t got anyone like this in your family!” as he felt in his breast pocket.
“Now it’s coming” murmured the articled clerk. For they were by now familiar with the daguerrotype of Nilsson’s grandfather.
“Ha, your respected grandfather was an actor, I see, sir!” said the articled clerk. “He’s wearing one of the uniforms sent to us by a London theatrical costumier as you will have read in our local paper.”
“This rag,” cried Nilsson, picking up the paper in order to throw it down again, “is a permanent all-time low! It’s just about what it calls itself, ‘The Lynton Lantern’!” He picked it up once more. “See the splash on page one! Half a dozen old goats to be turned loose to replace a similar lot of upholstered old hat racks standing about in the Valley of Rocks until they were eaten by you peasants duri
ng the war! I quote:– ‘Colonel Peregrine Bucentaur has graciously offered to present to the Devon County Council his famous Brockholes St. Boniface herd of wild white goats, whose pedigree is said to go back in direct line to Caractacus, the Welsh partisan in the fight against the Romans in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, 54 B.C.’ You call that bumph, news? It stinks, like the goats!”, and Nilsson tore up The Lynton Lantern.
Ignoring the tipsy American, the articled clerk, who had been born in Somerset, told his cronies at the bar how Colonel Bucentaur once had a private golf course in his park.
“The goats used to wait for the balls, and run off with them, sometimes chasing the crows who pinched them first! An old fox used to join in sometimes, playing with the crows and the goats! Honestly, I’m not making it up! There was a tennis court above a haha, to keep out deer, and later, cattle in the park, but the goats got up all the same. Some used to leap over the net! They were used to playing with the family children, you see. When the Abbey was sold, Flash Billy, the Plymouth circus proprietor, tried to buy the goats for his circus, but Colonel Bucentaur wouldn’t sell.”
“You’re a zyme!” called out Nilsson. “I’ll tell you somep’n! Your British Empire was founded by a lot of old goats glued together by cricket! I speak straight from the shoulder!”
“Your trouble is that there isn’t any shoulder,” retorted the aspirant solicitor. “All you can do is to emulate Balaam’s ass.”
This put Nilsson in a rage. He stood and pulled up the trouser of his left leg. “That’s what I got, fighting for you half-krauts!”
“Ah, Exhibit Number Two. We wondered when another inquest was due.”
“Right now, you bogus attorney, right now! You British like to keep your ‘heroes’ on ice, else they melt away to nothing if exposed to the light of day. Your ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was one, and Manfred Lord Cloudesley was another. How did you manage to win both wars? Shall I tell you zymes? You fake history, it’s as simple as that. We Americans won both Kraut wars for you! We gave of our dollars and our blood, which is thicker than your beer. You want to know what Dwight Eisenhower said when he got his first taste of British beer? He said, ‘Put it back in the horse’.”
“That beer had been kept waiting for him three years, midear, that’s why it had gone flat!”
On that the zymes went home, leaving Nilsson addressing an impassive club steward behind the mahogany counter.
Chapter 19
FROM THE VASTY DEEP
Piston was awaiting the guests to his mother’s séance. That afternoon Mrs. Nilsson had called to ask if her husband might attend ‘as an observer’. His mother had said yes. Piston was anxious, a little unnerved at the thought of Nilsson. However Phillip was coming. Piston felt safe with him now. Also ‘Buster’ and Laura were O.K. Of Brigadier Tarr he had a real fear. The Brig at any moment was liable to become bloody-minded. As for Nilsson—
A curious thing sometimes happened when he thought of Nilsson: he felt to be almost outside his body, seeing it just beside him: everything seemed a little unreal. Piston believed that Nilsson’s evil side was trying to take charge of him. And he feared a collapse.
Soon after the 1914–18 war Piston had been subject to epileptic fits. To fall down before others was to a him a wounding disgrace.
He began to walk about the room, to plead with Nilsson for understanding.
“Please don’t come, old boy. Honestly, the vibrations have to be right on the beam, otherwise no reception. It’s all part of the natural world, you know. You were damned unfair to Caspar Schwenkfelder, you know. He put me right with myself. He could put you right with yourself, if only you would give up your defences, otherwise blockages.”
No one was in the room with Piston. He was addressing the detachable and hurtful image of the American writer.
Those present that June evening at Shelley’s Cottage were Molly Bucentaur and her daughter Miranda, ‘Buster’ and Laura, Brigadier Tarr, Phillip, and surprisingly, an old acquaintance last seen many years ago—Archibald Plugge, a little fatter, curly hair greying and recessive, owl-eyes behind thick concave glasses beaming benevolently as in the old days of the B.B.C. at Savoy Hill.
“My dear Phil, how good to see you again, looking just the same as ever! Have you heard any news of Piers Tofield? The last time I saw him he was, well—not at his best,” he laughed. “He told me you were coming down this way.”
“He’s recovered, Archie. How are you?”
“My dear old boy, I can’t tell you how what you say delights me. Oh, I’m not so bad, old boy, not so bad at all. You probably know I’m public relations at Oldstone Castle?” His voice dropped. “I suppose you saw all the stuff in the papers? It’s the same story of the B.B.G. and the gramophone companies over again. You may remember how they objected to their records being played over 2 L.O., thinking it would ruin their sales?” He moved away from the others. “We are simply overwhelmed by volunteer students applying to attend our courses of Diaphany.”
“What exactly is Diaphany?”
“The literal meaning of the word is the power to transmit light. I’m not familiar with all the processes, but the idea, roughly, is that most people are self-frustrated by some concealed fear, or shame, which, if not cleared, that is released, causes depression and finally, serious illness.”
“There’s something in that. Does it cost very much to be a student?”
“Well, we aren’t out to make a profit; but at the same time food, light, housing and other services have to be paid for.”
“Students come for idealistic reasons, I suppose.”
“Yes. At the same time, the courses are pretty strenuous.”
“Do you apply electric treatment, or drugs?”
“No. We regard such practices as destructive, while not removing the causes of blockages.”
“Who started Diaphany?”
“Jesus Christ, Goethe, William Blake, D. H. Lawrence, Richard Jefferies, Father Teilhard de Chardin—the main object is to try to release the essence of poetry in people.”
“I’d like to meet your friend. Will he be coming tonight?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s in London, old boy, arranging details of the new centre in Hampshire, to take the overflow. We’ve got a friend of yours coming here shortly, by the way—Melissa Watt-Wilby. Now, before I forget, old boy, I can give you several whole-page advertisements for your New Horizon, if you like. And an article, free, about our Founder. What’s your circulation?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. Half the five hundred subscribers wrote to cancel their subscriptions when Christie gave it up. And my first number gave offence to others. Chiefly because I quoted some of Birkin’s post-war writings.”
“You did rather ram Birkin down their throats, old boy, didn’t you? But seriously, we could help you, if only you’d do the same thing for us. Not that we need publicity. But no prophet likes to be dishonoured. Would you like some backing? I fancy my boss would take to the idea of a quarterly house-journal. The name is in line with our teachings, too.”
“What does he teach—in a sentence if you can?”
“That we must go to the creative side of the mind, which when sick is the cause of all illness. Put the mind right and few will be ill. Psychiatry is superceded.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I hear you knew our host Piston in the first war? Was he in the Army?”
“Well, he’d just come out of July the First on the Somme, badly shaken.”
“People down here say he wasn’t in the war at all.”
“Of course he was! I saw him in the Casualty Clearing Station at Heilly, on July the First. He was as mad as a whirligig beetle waltzing about on a pond after a mate.”
Plugge laughed so much that his coffee spilled into the saucer.
Just before the séance began Mrs. Nilsson arrived alone. “You know how Osgood gets sometimes. Oh,” she said cheerfully to Mrs. Piston, “Don’t misunderstand me, my dear, it’s not his leg that’s worrying him this time, but h
is deadline for the New York paper.” Turning to Phillip. “Is your sister Elizabeth coming? I thought perhaps you might be bringing her,” she went on untruthfully, for Elizabeth had responded to her caller’s friendliness, and told her a surprising lot of things about her brother, about whom she obviously had a ‘thing’, Rosalie had told others.
“We had such an interesting talk, Phillip.”
He felt himself becoming feeble.
*
The french windows looked out upon the lawn, beyond which an aspen stood, its leaves shivering in the warm airs ascending. Beyond came the noises of rapid water in the Glen.
Piston now brought the two halves of the window together, almost closing them. He put on a gramophone record of Holst’s Planet Suite; music flowed serenely, as from the deep calm of remote starry space. They sat round a table, curtains drawn across windows. Two candles on a sideboard. When the music ended Mrs. Piston, who had been an actress, asked them to hold hands, and rest them on the round table. Then, after a silence, she began to recite, speaking in a soft voice that made the words seem to be floating through from beyond the french windows.
“‘The summer night waneth the morning light slips
Faint and grey twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud
bars.
Far out in the meadow above the young corn
The heavy elms wait.’”
She drew a deep breath and as though helplessly waved a hand before closed eyes. Through light-streaked edges of the curtains came the call of a cuckoo in the Glen, with intermittent rushing sounds of water deflected under the leaves of the aspen on the lawn, shivering, shivering.
The Gale of the World Page 27
