Sir Pompey And Madame Juno

by Martin Armstrong

  Michael Dunne, having finished his breakfast, appeared in the doorway and stood looking up at the sky. Then he lowered his eyes to the scene before him and slowly drew in his breath. It was delicious to be in the country again. The trees, loaded mound upon mound with fresh young green; the pervading hush of the river; the soft clean air tinged with the smell of wet earth and standing water breathed up from the river edge, thrilled him with indescribable delight. He glanced again at the sky. It was bright, too bright, at present, but there were light clouds in the blue and a gentle breeze: there would certainly be intervals of dullness. Not, on the whole, a bad day for fishing. He had made up two fishing-casts overnight, seated in the bow-window of the sitting-room with half a dozen trout-flies hanging from his mouth. When the gut was sufficiently soaked, he drew out the flies one by one and carefully knotted them on to the cast. He had decided to use nothing but March Browns, and old Wales, the landlord, had entirely agreed when Dunne had mentioned it to him.

  He was ready to start now at any moment, and he stood there in the doorway with his hands in his breeches-pockets, impatiently waiting for the sun to stop shining. From time to time in the inn behind him footsteps tapped along the stone-floored passage and died away. But at last he was roused by some that came closer and closer still and finally stopped just behind his back. He swung round. Somebody was waiting to be allowed to pass: a young woman. With a quick apology Dunne moved out of her way and she came out, thanking him with a smile as she passed him, and moved away along the front of the inn, a slim figure in a brown coat and skirt. A white-handled umbrella hung from her left arm: her right hand carried a camp-stool and a satchel.

  Dunne stood watching her. It was as if in its flying course an invisible flame had swept over him, for the brief glimpse of her face had thrilled him suddenly and profoundly. Only two or three times before had that curious experience befallen him, for he was not easily attracted by women. He stood now, immovable, gazing after her with flushed face, till she vanished round the corner of the house: then he turned back into the inn, his sense resounding with the impression of her. In a few minutes, he reappeared, preceded by the slim point of his rod. He had put on his waders and an old cap stuck with one or two gaudy salmon-flies; a creel hung at his left side. His emotion at the sight of the beautiful girl had died down; he was calm again, and now he began to make his way down the little garden path under the elm-trees, carefully pointing the wavering tip of the rod into the spaces between the thick hanging foliage. At the river’s edge he paused to survey again the grey and golden bridge whose four stone arches towered above him a stone’s throw away to his right. Under the two nearest, at this time of the year, there was nothing but dry gravel, thickly overgrown near the bank with a jungle of wild rhubarb. Under the third, the water, brown and clear as ale, babbled shallow over the pebbles. It was only under the fourth, where it washed the farther bank, that the water was deep.

  Dunne clambered down, holding his rod carefully in front of him, and began to push through the great funnel-shaped rhubarb leaves. Then, crunching across the gravel-bed, he waded through the shallows to a little island within a short cast of a round pool, the very place for a trout. He had watched them rising there on the previous evening as he stood, an hour after his arrival, leaning idly over the parapet of the bridge. It was a deep, round pool, slowly stirred by a circular eddy which swung the streaks of floating spume into narrowing whorls, so that it looked, from above, like a huge polished ammonite. He had decided to fish upstream from that point.

  It was years, four years at least, since he had last had a day’s fishing, but as he began casting up to the head of the pool, he recovered at once that delicious mood peculiar to the fisherman – a mood composed of conscious craft, expectation, and at the same time a quiet passivity laying the mind open to streams of thoughts and ideas which flow through the brain easily as the flowing of the river, washing it clean of complexities.

  The breeze had almost died down. Not a fish was stirring. And, moving slowly upstream, he worked leisurely on for half an hour without getting a single bite. But just as he reached the lower end of another promising pool – a gently swirling pool fed by a narrow and copious flow – the breeze freshened again and the day clouded over. It was ideal now – grey, and with just the right purl on the water.

  The fish were beginning to feed. A small one rose in the pool a few yards from where he stood; then, just under the bank, another, a larger one. The sudden musical splash sounded clear and sharp above the monotonous babbling of the water. Then, as though his line were a nerve identifying the finger that held it with every movement of the floating fly, he felt three electric tugs. The end of his rod curved into a hoop, and he began to play the trout.

  It was only, he knew at once, a small one-something over a quarter of a pound perhaps; and, though it fought gamely, as a trout always does, Dunne landed it at once. It lay for a moment motionless on the pebbles with helpless, gaping mouth: but as he stooped to take hold of it, suddenly it began to twist and wriggle, tense as a steel spring. Dunne caught it, grasping the firm, wincing body in his left hand while with his right he began to work the hook free of its mouth, twisting and wrenching the pale, talc-like flesh. Then, stooping again, he struck its head against a stone. It lay motionless in his palm now, a limp, exquisite shape of silver, gold, and brown. The delicate cucumber scent of it rose to his nostrils. Between a quarter and half a pound he thought, and dropped it into his creel.

  A few minutes later, soon after he had begun to cast again, Dunne experienced a curious repetition of the physical sensation of striking the soft, unresisting creature against the stone. A little shudder ran through his vitals. Curious! Could it have been something disagreeable in the sound of it, or in the sense of the too hard striking the too soft? He shuddered again, but less perceptibly, and then the ceaseless tinkle of the water smoothed the faint scar from his mind. Peaceably, incoherently his thoughts swirled with the swirling clusters of bubbles.

  But soon he was thinking coherently again. What was it that happened when he struck the trout’s head against the stone and all its exquisite mechanism stopped for ever? Was it nothing more than that he broke the delicate motor housed in the little box in the skull? No more than the smashing of a watch? Years ago, old Mr. Worston, the peppery old gentleman who always gave him a sovereign when he went back to school after the summer holidays, smashed his watch against the wall in Hexham station because it was slow and had made him miss the express. Smash! Swinging it the full length of the heavy-gold chain. A pulp of little gold wheels and broken glass. Delightful thought! It had delighted him as a boy and it delighted him still. But a watch is hard. To smash something hard … a bottle or an egg against a wall … how satisfying! But to hit a fish … a limp, soft fish … and alive! Another faint shudder. All the leaves on the river bank hissed and rustled suddenly: hurrying grey spearheads shot along the surface of the stream. The wind was freshening.

  A twitch. A palpitating tug. He had hooked another; and a few minutes after that there was another, and then another-a much larger one. Such a game one it was that Dunne thought for a moment that it must be a salmon-trout. When he landed it, the hook was fixed in the extreme tip of the lower jaw: it was a wonder it had held. A fine fish, fully a pound, the tarnished silver sides spotted with rose. Dunne gazed at it fascinated, curiously inspecting the staring, expressionless eyes, set like the work of a master jeweller in the subtly moulded bronze of the head. The slippery body thrilled and stiffened spasmodically in his clenched fingers. Its slipperiness was beginning already to grow viscous against his palm. The foolish mouth gaped patiently, sufferingly, and Dunne suddenly recalled the blanched, tight-lipped mouth of a dying man whom, years ago, he had visited in hospital. He felt his heart contract under his ribs. Then, throwing off his morbid fancies, he stooped down and struck the trout’s head against a stone, as he had struck the other. The body stiffened: the tail curved up tensely like a spring. He struck it again and then loosene
d his grip. The second blow had done it: the body was limp and flaccid now: the life was gone.

  Gone where? Could the life be something distinct from the body it actuated … could it fly out and escape from the killed fish? A shadow … a little puff of cigarette-smoke, detaching itself from the fish’s mouth … floating away? Life must be the same as what some people call the soul … The immortality of the soul … A fish’s soul … Jesu, lover of my soul. A flood of the emotion which that hymn always produced in him as a boy. Ancient memories … sentimental … absurd!

  A touch on his face, soft, fluttering. Here he was, standing up to his thighs in water, fishing. A gust of wind was furrowing the water and blowing his line along in a great bow. He reeled in a few yards of it. The breeze stiffened: all his fisherman’s skill was needed now, and for the next few minutes his attention was concentrated on throwing a clean line in defiance of the breeze. But it had only been a momentary flurry: soon it had swept on downstream and with the return of calm Dunne dropped back into his former line of thought….

  Fishes are cold-blooded creatures without feeling. A comforting idea, but false-mere metaphor and simile drawn from human experience. We know nothing outside our own narrow circle of experience, can never escape into the universal where everything is true and equal. A simple thing to beat the life out of a trout; and yet, when we have done it, what have we done? A mystery. A tremendous act of whose consequences we know nothing. Who can tell? perhaps the death of a fish changes irrevocably the whole hidden scheme of things. And yet, wherever there is life, there must be death. All life devours life, even the sheep and cows that munch grass. Life feeding on life. Life destroying life that it may live. An endless process … process … progress … progression … the scheme of things … stream of things …

  The stream had caught his mind again, caressing it, floating it safely away from all those jarring, sharp-edged thoughts. But now the fish had stopped taking and during the next hour Dunne caught nothing. Yet he fished on, soothed by the peacefully sliding river, his mind sliding with the water over rough and smooth, deep and shallow. Then, discovering that he was hungry, he looked at his watch and began to wade towards the bank.

  There he sat down and took out his flask and sandwiches. But before beginning to eat he opened his creel, tumbled out the contents, and arranged them in a row on the grass. They were a nice lot – seven fish ranging from a quarter to half a pound and, at the end, the noble one-pounder. They were dull and gummy now; their clean slipperiness was gone, their iridescence faded. Dunne gazed at them until his mind slipped out of the grooves of habit and again he was gazing at fish for the first time in his life. Strange, unbelievable creatures; mysterious slips of life, swift and spearlike, marvellously designed and coloured. He stared at their eyes; for a man, baffled by man or beast, always stares at the eye, that smouldering window of the spirit, and there finds some partial answer to his question. But these quaint metallic disks, stark as the painted eyes of a mask, told him nothing except that their secret was undiscoverable or that there was nothing to discover. They did not even rebuke him, like the eye of a dead bird or animal, for snatching them from their secret world and slaughtering them. Dunne sighed and next moment shrugged his shoulders. After all, such questions as he was asking have no answer. Neither philosophy nor religion casts any light on them. To what category, then, can they belong? To poetry, perhaps: and Dunne, being no poet, but a solicitor and a fisherman, threw the trout back one by one into the creel and began to eat his sandwiches.

  The sun came out. He looked anxiously at the sky: this would play the devil with his afternoon. But meanwhile it was delicious to feel its warmth on his back, stealing through coat and shirt. He finished his last sandwich, lit a cigarette, and leaned back full length on the grass. Although the sun was still shining, clouds covered more than half the sky: there was certainly some hope, now, for the afternoon. A luxurious drowsiness overcame him: he closed his eyes for a moment then opened them again. Then he closed them again and this time they remained closed. The cigarette fell from his fingers and lay twining a blue spiral among the tall green grass-blades.…

  He was still fishing. The little brass rings on his rod had sprouted into green leaf-buds. He was fishing in a stream of liquid gold, the Gulf Stream. All at once he noticed that his line was running out noiselessly … longer … longer … longer. He clasped it to the butt of the rod, gripped it with all his strength. When he had almost given up hope, he succeeded at last in holding it. Then slowly he began to reel in, and as he did so the reel tinkled a little tune like a musical-box. It was a heavy fish – a pound at least. He reeled away strenuously until he had reeled the cast right out of the water.

  A beautiful wooden fish, streaked with scarlet and blue, hung from the end of it. A Chinese fish. Each eye was a gold disk with a daisy in the centre of it. He began to sway the rod so that the fish swung to and fro. When it was at the top of its swing he suddenly dipped the rod and the fish dropped on the bank. But the moment it touched earth it began to cry – a horrible human cry. ‘No! No!’ it cried. ‘No! No! No!’ He stood staring at it, appalled, not daring to touch it. Then, bracing himself, he suddenly put his foot on it and immediately swooped upon it to remove the hook. The fish did not move, but its mouth opened and shut spasmodically like an automatic toy and, to his horror, it began to cry again. But soon its voice flagged, died away, fainter … fainter … It had become almost inaudible when suddenly, as if summoning its last strength, it shouted aloud a single sharp ‘Ah!’

  Dunne awoke. A shaggy dog stood looking at him wagging its tail. He held out his hand to it and sat up, but the dog flounced away and trotted off along the bank with its tail down. Dunne looked about him. The sun had gone in: conditions were perfect once again. He felt refreshed and clear-headed after his sleep and, scrambling to his feet, he pocketed his flask, took up his rod and creel, and began to work slowly downstream.

  During the afternoon he added eight good fish to his catch, and by five o’clock he had got back to the point from which he had started. He reeled in and, securing his cast, waded to the bank. He was looking forward to showing the fish to old Wales. Mrs. Wales would fry the best of them for dinner: she knew how to fry trout perfectly, rolling them first in oatmeal and serving them with melted butter. He climbed up the bank to the little path and, with his rod pointed in front of him, began to make his way cautiously under the elm-trees. In the creel behind him a trout not yet dead kept up a dry, persistent rustling.

  As he came out in front of the inn he became aware of something unusual. A little group of people was moving towards the door. They were stooping as if carrying something. A few yards from the bridge an empty motor stood at the roadside.

  When Dunne came up with the moving group they had reached the inn door. They were carrying something laid on a large sack, as on a stretcher, and with a sudden constriction of the heart he caught sight, between two of the bearers, of an end of brown skirt hanging over the edge of the sack. Hardly knowing what he did, he propped his rod against the house-wall and, turning his back on the door, walked away towards the standing car. His instinct had been to escape from something unbearable. Then, pausing dazed where the road dipped from the bridge, he saw lying at the roadside between him and the car a white-handled umbrella. He stooped and gently picked it up and began to carry it to the inn. He felt vaguely that he had found something that he could do for her.

  The bearers had vanished indoors. Dunne entered the stone-flagged hall with its pleasant, humble smell of beer and sawdust. A group of women – Mrs. Wales and the three servants–stood with their backs to him at an open door, their heads craning into a great bare room. It was a room unused except in summer-time when large parties came to the inn for lunch or tea. Several people were inside. A table was being moved. Dunne, still holding her umbrella, paused beside the women.

  ‘What happened?’ he whispered.

  One of the maids turned a white face to him. ‘The car knocked her down,�
� she replied. ‘It must have come on her when she was crossing the road.’

  Another turned. ‘They come so unexpected over that bridge,’ she said.

  Old Mrs. Wales was leaning against the doorpost with her apron to her eyes, Dunne touched her arm. ‘Is she … is she much hurt?’ he asked.

  The old woman raised her bleared face from the apron and stared at him vacantly. Then her chin began to tremble. ‘Hurt? She’s dead, poor thing!’ she whispered.

  *

  Twenty-five years later Dunne himself died. He was a bachelor, and his things went to his nephews. They had spent several days in his house, going through cupboards and drawers. Last of all they looked into the attic. It was half dark, but one of them, rummaging among old hatboxes and portmanteaux, pulled out a creel and a fishing-rod in a canvas case. Both the creel and the case were cloaked with the grey wool of cobwebs.

  ‘I say, look at this!’ the young man called to his brother. ‘I never knew the Uncle was a fisherman.’

  An Explosion

  Mildred would have been surprised and indignant if anyone had told her that she hated Edward. An idea so unusual had never occurred to her, even though, if she had been able to examine herself honestly, she would have found a formidable mass of evidence to support it, for she often made herself extremely disagreeable to him. But that, she would have objected, was his fault, not hers. He was devoted to her, of course – there was no question of that – ‘as devoted now, poor Edward, as on the day of our marriage,’ she used to explain to her women-friends. The trouble was that, despite his devotion, he didn’t understand her, was simply incapable of appreciating her highly-strung, sensitive nature.

  It was when she had one of her nerve-attacks that he always became most unbearable. Not that he was intentionally unsympathetic: on the contrary, it was by hovering round and trying to help that he irritated her. Whatever he did and said on these occasions was always the wrong thing; and if he did and said nothing, that, she felt, was more annoying still. Yet if Mildred had been asked to suggest the ideal behaviour for Edward during these crises, she would not have been able to reply. But, after all, how could she be expected to know? You can hardly expect the sufferer herself to dictate the kindnesses which would mean so much to her. That, surely, must be left to the intuition and delicate feeling of those about her.