OLD MAN'S BEARD

by H. R. Wakefield

  ‘Poor devil, was she very knocked up?’

  ‘She hadn’t a chance to be, she was drowned in Hunton too.’

  ‘What!’ cried Brent. ‘At the same time?’

  ‘No, in September, while bathing.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Brent. ‘These are curious goings-on for the sober and responsible county of Bucks. But seriously, that seems rather an extraordinary coincidence.’

  Lumley looked out from the club window to Pall Mall, where taxis were honking and jostling through the streaming March night.

  ‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘I suppose I shall have to tell you the story, though I swear it shall be for the last time. I’m utterly sick of it.’

  ‘Why have you been appointed the Kai-Lung of these events?’ asked Brent.

  ‘Because I was more or less in at the death, and not so far from sharing the fate of the principals. Also I knew Bob rather better than any of them, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to say your piece again, and if the tale pleases me I will drop some yen into your bowl.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Lumley resignedly. ‘Now you only saw these people at a few weekends, so I shall have to tell you more about them. About Bob and Brenda I mean.

  ‘Now Harriday was a very curious and complex person. This was no doubt partly due to the fact that his father had been a fearless and pugnacious free-thinker and his mother a morbidly credulous Anglo-Catholic. Why they ever married was and remained a complete mystery. But this hopelessly incompatible union had appropriate issue. Bob was a painter of great promise. I’m no judge of such things, but those who are assured me of it. But what I could realise was that he was conversationally a genius. We are not exactly a high-brow colony in East Bucks, but we listened to Bob, though his talk was informed, highly sophisticated and obviously the fruit of a very nimble intelligence which had trained itself by deep and catholic study to the highest degree of precision and subtlety, though curiously enough he never wrote, or tried to, I believe. Not that he ever preached or paraded his knowledge, he simply released a spring in his brain and a beautifully ordered torrent of paradox, aphorism and profound verbal ingenuity poured forth. Not often though. He was completely silent as a rule. He spent most of his time quite alone. He came out of his solitude more in the summer, for he loved tennis and played it, as you know, almost brilliantly. And then there was his Sex Appeal, as I believe it’s called. Sometimes it’s also called “IT”, I gather. Well, whatever it’s called Bob had it. I once asked Lillian how she felt about him. She replied, that if he hadn’t been somewhat of a misogynist she would strongly advise me not to leave them alone together on a hot June night. When I asked what weird power he possessed through which he could lure into wanton imaginings the staidest of matrons, she declared she knew no more than I did. She didn’t like him so particularly, but that something in his personality aroused dreams of primitive ecstasy in every woman of temperament. It wasn’t only his looks and it wasn’t his intelligence, it was an amalgam, and a woman could no more explain his effect on her if she were temperamental than she could explain the effect of Beethoven on her if she were musical. That those of her friends who were sensitive to such influences unanimously agreed with her that he could be, if he chose, the Pied Piper of East Bucks, and so on.

  ‘Now you have suggested that we, the jealous husbands and fathers of Great Wissenden and district, frowned upon him. Not really, I think. We should desperately have feared the music of his pipe if he’d ever shown signs of tuning up, but he never did, and the feminine adulation he encountered did not give him a swelled head; in fact it usually seemed to embarrass and bore him. He never played up to his attraction for women, one reason being possibly that he was as poor as a church mouse, and it galled him and soured him somewhat. He could just afford that tiny Top Cottage, but not to entertain or really be himself. He occasionally unburdened himself to me, and I know he felt cribbed, cabined and confined and ashamed of his poverty. And that was where Brenda Vandelaar came in with her ten thousand a year. If ever I saw a woman make up her mind to buy a man it was Brenda. Her will was as strong as her admirable body, her intentions as plain as her face. She employed the methods of modern War. Eschewing any strategical subtlety she flung her 200,000 golden mercenaries into the assault. She revealed to Harriday in a dozen ways how he might ease his lot and increase his felicity by means of her cheque-book. Bob, like most artists who are poor, was weak, that is to say, he most bitterly failed to see why we, who bought shares and sold soap and audited account books, should have nice comfortable houses and motor-cars, and the wherewithal to travel and enjoy ourselves, while he was condemned to indecorous penury, though his brain was worth all of ours put together. So in the end he succumbed and was engaged by Brenda. This was in the first week of August. Now I watched him carefully about this time. I watched him as he received somewhat cryptic congratulations. I watched him in the company of his bride-to-be, and I knew for certain he regretted his surrender as soon as he had made it, but he was actually terrorized by her ardour and potential violence. I could see that he hoped against hope that he might suddenly find the courage to escape, and was employing the usual temporising insincerities of the cornered weakling, the trapped gentleman, and I’m sure that he was always desperately strung between two opinions. Remember, he was a highly trained judge of what was beautiful. Certainly her money would enable him to travel and see all that was lovely in the world, and all he longed to see. And then her body was aesthetically satisfying, but her face was not merely plain — what we consider plain an artist often finds challenging and stimulating — it was lifeless, badly moulded, and, I can imagine, actually repulsive to anyone acutely sensitive to visual impressions. Anyhow there it was, and it always seemed to me that he was experiencing a sense of disgrace and degradation, that he was writhing in those triumphant coils, so that for the first time he allowed his gaze desperately to wander over the many stereotyped “pretties” of East Bucks, “Escape-me-never” hissing in his ears. Psychologically Brenda had the debits of her assets. A strong will, an indomitable determination, is seldom found allied with intellectual suppleness and finesse, and once she had, as it were, put her money down and obtained a binding option on the man she meant to marry, she showed it only too plainly. Her attitude became blandly and confidently proprietorial and possessive. She even had the supreme impertinence to criticise his work, with what must have been a maddening combination of confidence and philistinism. She displayed him and flaunted him before the highly exasperated locals, as if to say, “Look here, you maidens and matrons, I have secured that for which most of you in your heart of hearts lusted. Remember this, a pretty face is subject to the law of diminishing returns, as each year traces a line and etches in a crow’s-foot, whereas £200,000 properly invested increases and multiplies. I may be as plain as a petrol pump, but I’ve bought the most attractive man within a thirty-mile radius. I’ve bought him and I’ll keep him!” She was not exactly beloved.

  ‘It was not long before Harriday began to feel the strain. He lost his resilience, his face became drawn, and its expression inadequately concealed the molten irritation of his mind.’

  ‘He could have broken it off, I suppose?’ said Brent. ‘He hadn’t compromised her in any way, had he?’

  ‘Well, concerning that there were rumours. The night he got engaged he did not leave her house till five o’clock. Certainly that was merely servants’ gossip, but there’s no reason to doubt it. Anyhow if he’d had the guts to break it off, he’d have had the guts to prevent it happening, I imagine.’

  ‘Wasn’t she the older of the two?’ asked Brent.

  ‘Yes, thirty-one to his twenty-six.’

  ‘Was she in love with him?’

  ‘Yes, in a sense. She was very passionate by nature but vigorously repressed, and she released all her pent-up emotion on Bob, though it might have been any attractive man, I think. After a bit I kept out of their way, for Bob’s wretched attempts to play the lover an
d pretend he wasn’t miserable and utterly ashamed of himself were horrible to watch and got on my nerves. The wedding was fixed for the middle of October. On September 26th I went up to London as usual, and as there was a very heavy American mail I missed my usual train and didn’t get home till 8:30. Lillian met me on the doorstep, obviously heavy with tidings. Brenda had been drowned that afternoon in Hunton Reservoir. She and Harriday had gone down there to bathe about four o’clock. Half an hour later he had dashed up to the officers’ mess at the Aerodrome and told them that Brenda had suddenly thrown up her arms and disappeared, not to appear again. They were now dragging the lake.

  ‘There seemed to be nothing I could do for the moment, and I was tired and hungry, so I waited till after dinner and then rang up the Top Cottage, and found that Bob had just got in. He said he would like to see me, so I went round. He was pacing up and down his little studio, and he had been drinking. He immediately began to pour forth a rather incoherent account of what had happened, returning over and over again to the fact that he had had no chance of saving Brenda. When she sank they had been at least a hundred yards apart. He seemed temporarily unbalanced, and I attributed this to those very frequent, if very natural, visits to the tantalus. At the same time I thought I detected an intense sense of relief competing with the horror, and not quite concealed. This made my conventional condolences sound ridiculous. I advised him to get away after the inquest. But there was no inquest, for in spite of the most exhaustive scouring of the lake’s bottom, the body was not recovered. Harriday did go away for a few days, and when he came back he shut himself up and refused all invitations and was said to be drinking hard.’

  ‘Was there much local gossip?’ asked Brent. ‘I imagine that such an affair provided a welcome change from baby talk at tennis parties.’

  ‘Some of the women, shall we say “conjectured”, rather indiscreetly,’ replied Lumley, ‘but we did our best to shut them up. It was the fact that the body was not found which lent a certain air of mystery to the business. I couldn’t understand it myself. The dragging might easily fail, but why didn’t it reappear of its own accord? As you can imagine, Hunton ceased to be a very popular bathing place, for there was always the chance of finding an old friend at one’s side. Well, as it didn’t reappear there were veiled hints and insinuations that it wasn’t there at all — never had been — and Harriday’s drinking and hiding away, as it were, reinforced these sinister whispers. For his own sake I made up my mind to tackle him on the subject, and I went round early one Sunday morning. He was still in bed when I arrived, so I went into his studio. It was a glorious early autumn morning, radiant yet deliciously fresh, but the atmosphere of the studio was almost nauseatingly fetid and stale though the window was open. It smelt rank and mildewy, like rotting weeds, I remember thinking. Presently Bob came down. He was looking sluttish and ill, another “morning after” very obviously. As delicately as I could I stated my case. I told him that everyone was anxious to help him, and hurt and perplexed at his refusal to meet us half-way. That his behaviour was causing just a little comment — and then I was suddenly completely knocked out of my stride. We were sitting at a table, and I happened to glance down at the floor, and there, just behind Harriday, were the imprints of two little feet, and it seemed to me that the rankness of the atmosphere was intensified. And then these prints seemed to dry and fade. I pulled myself together and went on with my piece, but somehow without conviction, and I suddenly took a distinct dislike to the Top Cottage. Bob was looking very uneasy and would have visited the decanter if I hadn’t been there, I felt certain. However, he promised to make an effort. He was very anxious to know what I meant by “comment”. Did I mean that people thought that he hadn’t done all he could to save Brenda? As he mentioned her name he turned his head sharply and stared out into the garden for a moment.

  ‘I replied that nothing like that was being hinted because there wasn’t a particle of evidence to support it, it was simply that his conduct seemed funny. He looked at me searchingly to see if I was lying. I was, of course, and probably showed it.

  ‘ “I know you’ve had a ghastly experience,” I said, “but shutting yourself up and brooding on it is the worst possible method to adopt to recover from such a shock. It is all over. Brenda is at peace, you have nothing with which to reproach yourself. Take up your life again.”

  ‘He promised to try, and I left him. There was a mirror near the door and I could catch his reflection. He dropped his head into his hands with a gesture of utter dejection. From then on I found my mind constantly reverting to those footprints in an urgent search for a rational explanation of them. As their memory grew dim I eventually decided I had imagined them. But did I?

  ‘After that he did make an effort, and we all did what we could to help him, but it never looked like being successful, for he showed no sign of recovering. He was usually half-tight, and his tennis on the few occasions he played was melancholy evidence of his physical deterioration, though curiously enough he was selling his pictures — and very curious and uncomfortable pictures they were.

  ‘One evening late in November Lillian said to me, “You know that old hag, Mrs Colley, who cleans up the Top Cottage; well, she is saying in the village there’s something funny about it.”

  ‘I asked her how she knew and what she meant by “funny”. It was the usual story. The hag had told Mrs Lent’s maid, who had told our tweeny, who’d told the housemaid, who’d told Lillian. Plenty of opportunity for embroidery and expansion of the yarn, I judged.

  ‘As for the “something funny”, the hag declared she found marks on the stairs up to Bob’s bedroom, which looked as if they’d been made by a woman’s wet feet. (That made me sit up.)

  ‘ “Anything else?” I asked uneasily. “Yes, she thinks she’s seen Brenda’s dog in the garden several times.”

  ‘ “What, Stinko!”

  ‘ “Well, that’s what she says.”

  ‘Now, Harry, Brenda’s hound “Stinko” had been an unmistakable mongrel, but a sweet and most faithful gentleman, who had pined away and died when he found that his mistress was never coming back. And that was why I felt more or less sincere when I informed my good lady that I didn’t entirely believe Mrs Colley, knowing her remarkable capacity for absorbing Bass and Guinness in equal proportions, a beverage which probably made one dog very closely to resemble another.

  ‘ “Yes, I thought you’d say something unconvincing like that,” said Lillian, “but you must remember that Stinko used to spend much of his time hunting rats in the barn behind her cottage, and she knew him very well indeed.”

  ‘ “Then do you believe it?” I said.

  ‘ “I don’t know whether I do or not,” replied Lillian. “I think I do believe that Mrs Colley believes she sees Stinko, but whether she really sees him or not is a much more difficult question to answer.”

  ‘ “It certainly is,” I said, and feeling ruffled and restless I went out for a stroll after dinner, and I found myself going towards the Top Cottage, rather unwillingly and yet from some vague but urgent compulsion. When I reached the gate I saw there was a light in the studio, but the blinds were drawn. I walked up the little path and peeped through a crack in one of the blinds. I saw that Bob had his back to me, and for a moment I was extremely puzzled as to what he was doing. Though he was standing still his whole body seemed in motion. It was as though he was rehearsing a part in front of a mirror. I remember that was the first impression which I gained. Had there been anyone else in the room I should have said he was protesting or arguing violently with that person, but there was no other one — at least no one perceptible to me. And then I could just detect that he was speaking in a steady and seemingly most urgent murmur. All this affected me unpleasantly and I turned and walked back home. It wasn’t funk exactly, just a sense of certainty that I was utterly out of place, unwanted, impotent, intruding on something that was none of my business. But when that impression began to fade I began to feel somewhat ashamed of m
yself, and took a day off from the office and went to the Top Cottage the next morning. I may say I preferred it now by daylight. Bob was painting when I arrived, painting a woman’s foot, I noted, a whisky-and-soda by his side. He seemed very nervous and preoccupied. After a few commonplaces he looked at me searchingly and said, “Look here, there’s something I want to show you.” He went to a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper which he handed to me. It was a beautifully drawn plan of Hunton Reservoir, and on it were letters and a key to them below. For example:

  ‘ “A” on the chart was shown by the key to be, “Where Brenda disappeared.”

  ‘ “B”, “Where I was at the time.”

  ‘ “C”, “The Boat House.”

  ‘ “D”, “Where Stinko was sitting.”

  ‘And he’d drawn several portraits of Stinko in the left margin. On the right he had drawn what looked like rough sketches for his painting of the woman’s foot.

  ‘I was somewhat taken aback by this document and said rather fatuously, “But what does it matter where the dog was?”

  ‘He continued to stare at me with a very curious expression on his face.

  ‘ “Well,” he said, “he must have been able to see what happened; that’s important.”

  ‘ (“He’s going mad,” I thought.) However, I felt I must make one more effort to pull him round.

  ‘ “Look here,” I said, “everyone knows you did all you could. What’s the good of keeping the whole thing alive in your mind and letting it prey on you? Come and stay with us for a time. Why not?”

  ‘ “And bring my companions with me?” he replied. “It’s very good of you, but I couldn’t do that.”

  ‘ “I don’t know what you mean, but go away for God’s sake,” I cried, “and never come near the place again.”

  ‘He got up and walked over to his easel and appeared to be examining the painting upon it. “I can draw that woman’s foot rather well, can’t I?” he said. “Of course, as you have guessed, it’s done from life.”