by A. J. Cronin
‘Ask Sir Michael Fieldin’ if he’ll favour me with his presence. At his own convenience, ye understand. Tell him it’s somethin’ important.’
‘Yes, sah.’
Harvey jumped up as though he had been shot. His apathy had vanished. He leaned sharply over Corcoran.
‘They’re here? Here – in Santa Cruz? They haven’t gone?’
Corcoran took refuge in a delicate yawn. ‘Easy, easy now,’ he counselled. ‘Don’t be flyin’ off the handle.’ Harvey’s lips had turned quite pale.
‘But I thought – a whole fortnight –’
‘Ah, they’re still here,’ said Corcoran. ‘How would I be sendin’ for the man if he wasn’t here.’
A pause came.
‘I don’t want to see him,’ Harvey said quite dully. ‘And he doesn’t want to see me.’
‘That’s just where yer wrong me boy,’ declared Jimmy, lying back in his chair and inspecting his boots – shined to a high perfection by one of the ‘ yellow boys’. ‘Faith, he’s dyin’ to meet ye. And why not? Ye saved the little lady’s life, didn’t ye? He’s been lookin’ for ye all over – as well as meself. Faith, he’s one of the kindest. Ye wouldn’t meet a more agreeable in a whole week’s march. And he’s bubblin’ wid gratitude.’
‘Let him keep his gratitude.’
‘Pooh! A pack of nonsense,’ returned Jimmy. ‘Don’t be so impetyus. Ye want to get back home, don’t ye? Faith, ye don’t want to start beachcomin’ at your time of life.’ He broke off suddenly, raised his head, then nodded it violently to the man who had entered the lounge.
A coldness came over Harvey as he took in the other. Fielding – Mary’s husband – yes, the thought struck coldly, but with a curious unreality. Quite tall, quite broad, quite handsome – in an easy, take-it-for-granted way. His features were all in proportion, the nose straight, the chin beautifully smooth. He had a lot of nice, well-brushed yellow hair. His whole face wore an extraordinary amiability. He was stamped with amiability – as if he couldn’t, didn’t want to shake it off. His eyes in particular, of an optimistic blue, smiled upon the world and seemed perpetually to say: ‘Charming, charming, oh, really charming.’
He drew nearer. He looked very excited and pleased. He threw out his hand, almost rushed upon Harvey.
‘Splendid!’ he exclaimed. ‘Simply splendid. This makes things right – just absolutely right.’ There was a hollow pause; then Harvey allowed his hand to be shaken. There was nothing else to do.
‘Well, well,’ Fielding ran on, ‘if it isn’t the best thing –’ He twitched up the creases of his trousers and sat down. He pulled his chair close, said amiably – but with a very definite gravity:
‘Now tell me! Have you had lunch?’
Lunch! Harvey drew back. Was the man really serious? He gave him a suspicious stare.
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘ I’ve had lunch.’
‘Good Lord, what a pity. But you’ll dine with us. Heavens! what am I saying! You’ll do everything with us. I refuse to let you out of my sight. It’s marvellous to see you here at last. Quite marvellous. Mary will be delighted. Absolutely delighted. I know she’s been worrying, worrying her head off about you.’
Harvey started nervously, again. He couldn’t understand this – this inordinate placidity – so different from what he had expected. Didn’t Fielding realise – hadn’t anyone told him? Oh, it baffled – enraged him. And suddenly, in a hard voice, he said: ‘ Hasn’t your friend Carr had something to say about me?’
‘Carr!’ Fielding laughed. ‘ I never pay any attention to what Wilfred says. Never. He’s a good fellow is Wilfred. Terribly good on a horse. But erratic – oh, confounded impulsive sort of chap! His cables – hang it all – his cables almost rattled me.’
‘I’m not talking about the cables.’ Harvey said thickly. ‘I’m talking about something quite different.’
A pause came, whilst Harvey waited, rigid and intent. But Fielding, lost in sudden abstraction, now seemed studying him with a profound, yet indulgent eye.
‘Collars?’ he remarked at last. ‘Yes, it’s going to be difficult. Especially the collars! What size do you take? I’ll wager it’s an inch less than me. I’m 17 – isn’t that simply foul! But mind you – everything else I can let you have – a suit that’s never been worn – thank goodness old Martin shoved it in – razor, underwear, tooth-brush, sponge, the whole kit. But, hang it all,’ he frowned humorously, ‘ I’m not so sure about the collars!’
No, it was not an affectation. He was really concerned in a mild, half-quizzical sort of way about this little business of the collars. Concerned and quite interested. Harvey could have groaned. He’d expected everything – everything but this bright-eyed banter. He averted his head, stared gloomily at the floor.
‘You know,’ said Fielding, ‘I haven’t thanked you yet. Good Lord!’ His charming, inconsequential smile flashed out again. ‘It’s quite marvellous, Mary’s recovery. I’m terribly grateful. Sort of thing you can’t talk about. She’s actually getting up now. Soon she’ll be able to travel – by plane of course. Then we’ll let the country air finish the job at Buckden.’ He paused, added cheerfully: ‘You’ll stay with us. Of course you will. That’s understood. You might rather care for Buckden. Nice little place. I’ve a hybrid rose I’d like to show you. Quite new. Not so stuffy, I assure you. I shall bring it out this year. At the Horticultural.’
Harvey sat quite still. The whole thing was so incomprehensible it left him speechless. Fielding must know – yes, he must know absolutely. And yet – this smiling, unruffled equanimity – it did nothing, it simply held the situation in a horrible suspense. He wanted to hate Fielding. But he could not. Friendliness alone he must have loathed. But there was something – something about the man so completely unassertive. He had everything: looks, breeding, charm, and that unconquerable amiability. Yet he seemed placidly to assume that he had nothing. It was impossible to dislike him.
At last Harvey muttered:
‘I’m sorry I can’t accept your invitation. You return by plane. I’m going back by boat. It’s hardly likely we’ll meet in England.’
Fielding let out a vigorous protest.
‘My dear fellow,’ he exclaimed. ‘ What on earth! You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re not going back by boat. ’Tisn’t built yet’ – a laugh. ‘You’re going back by plane – with us.’ He took it all blandly for granted. Then, with that same lack of continuity, he gave his knees a definite pat and energetically stood up: ‘Come along, now. No time for talking. I’ve got a room for you. You want a bath and a change. Then we’ll nip over and see Mary. It’s just a step.’
As he spoke, the swing-doors of the hotel squeaked and clattered. And Elissa came into the lounge followed by Carr and Dibdin. When they saw Harvey, the three stopped short. There was something rather foolish in their sudden combined astonishment. They came over slowly.
‘Just the right touch,’ remarked Elissa – she had recovered herself and was airily inspecting Harvey’s beard – ‘ to make it spectacular and exciting.’
‘And heroic?’ Carr added with a sneer; there was still a delicate purple around his left eye. ‘We fall on his bosom and weep.’
‘Shut up, Wilfred,’ Fielding interposed. ‘Do you want me to sack you on the spot? Did you go down to Stanford about the plane, or did you not? Answer me, you idiot.’
‘Of course I went down,’ Carr replied sulkily. ‘He’s only got one thing more to finish – the oil-feed or something. He said any day next week. Providing the weather’s right.’
‘Thank God,’ Dibdin ejaculated, as if he were spitting out a prune stone, ‘ we’ll soon be quit of this beastly hole.’
Fielding turned round in his reasonable way.
‘You’re going back by boat, of course. You understand that, Dibs?’
‘By boat?’ gasped Dibs. His tone was horrified.
‘The plane only takes four – besides Stanford.’
‘But – surely – four �
� I mean to say –’ Dibs’ shocked glance passed from Harvey to Fielding and back again. His watery eyes widened gradually to dismay. His monocle fell out and his mouth fell open. He collapsed, blankly, into a chair.
Elissa shook with laughter. She sat on the arm of the chair, helped herself to a cigarette. But she looked up as Fielding took Harvey’s arm.
‘Where are you going?’ she enquired, eyeing them from behind the smoke. ‘Polite afternoon call on the convalescent?’
‘No,’ Fielding answered cheerfully, ‘ we’re goin’ to look for collars.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The roar of the twin engines was hardly noticeable in the insulated cabin of the plane. Now they were all so used to it. Just that steady drone. Nor was there much sense of movement. Tearing along at two miles to the minute they seemed simply to be lolling in the blue above a vast grey feather-bed of cloud. Against the laboured outward passage of the ship this homeward flight was arrow-swift.
Only two days since Santa Cruz.
They had risen from the bay on Thursday, before noon. A calm, clear day; not much sun; the water green and flat as a slab of glass. Risen so unexpectedly that Mother Hemmingway had thrown up her window and thrust out her shiny head – flummoxed, fair flummoxed, she was!
‘Gawd blimey, but they’ve gorn. Carajo coño! And never looked near us to s’y ta-ta. Such bleedin’ unfriendliness – oo’d a thought it. By the pins of the twelve apostles I’ll watch my company in future! ’Ere, Cuca, fetch us a drop of nigger’s blood. Pronto, pronto, I’m struck all of an ’eap. ’ Streuth!’
And Tranter, startled by the humming in the sky, had rushed from his newly-rented mission hall to crane his neck at the retreating speck.
‘Oh, gee, they’ve gone,’ clasping his milky hands emotionally. ‘Oh, gee, that’s rid me of trouble and temptation. Oh, praise God. And I’m gonna make a success of the mission after all. Hallelujah!’ And, running back like a big rabbit, he had plumped himself before the harmonium. With all the fervour of the sinner reclaimed, he had drowned all sound in the booming hymn.
My sins were as high as a mountain,
They all disappeared in the fountain.
Only at Los Cisnes had the departure been foreseen. Dibs, of course, had known. But, immured in a sepulchral huff, he had refused to stir a foot from the hotel. At the Casa, however, a huge, white table-cloth flapped from the rotten flagstaff, like a piece of washing gone astray. And beneath it two tiny figures stood – a grey ant and a black ant – waving and waving. There was a mote of light that might have been the glitter of a snuff-box. And then the plane went soaring out across the sea on which the island lay verdant and lovely, like a lily pad upon a pond. The Peak was last to go – melting away into the glittering illusion of the sky.
That night they had spent at Lisbon, swooping upon the Tagus beyond the ridge of Cintra. Then on, the next day, skirting Oporto, Vigo, Lugo, cutting the corner of the Cantabrian Alps, across the Bay to Bordeaux. It was so easy and unhurried. And yet so swift. Going away – going back. The air was colder as they lifted from the broad Garonne and struck north to Nantes; colder, too, was the sea.
The last day of the journey – how quickly it was slipping past. Inexorably St Malo now, with the sands of Paramé stretched out yellow as corn. But only for a minute. They melted away like the rest, into the sea, the air, the low interminable drone of the exhaust.
Fielding explained the route with real enthusiasm. He had an elegant map, callipers, exuberant delight in doing things to the second. Time-tables, he announced, engrossed him; there had been – in his boyhood – a book by Verne and a gentleman named Fogg. To arrive ‘to the tick’ – that was real proof of mind over matter. At present he was forward in the cockpit, enquiring of Stanford whether such a thing were so. Or not?
From the rear seat of the cabin Harvey let his gaze slip through the square window at his shoulder. The clouds were thin and fleecy now, as though that great bed had burst and scattered its feathers on the sea below. Snatches of slaty water drifted past. The sun glittered without heat.
Going away – going back. With a stealthy movement he turned his head and looked at Mary. She was staring straight in front of her, her fingers just touching the unopened book that lay upon her knee. She was silent, pale and thin – oh, so very thin. Better, of course, quite fit to travel. But strangely shadowy still, her chin pressed into the fur collar of her coat, her lashes lying darkly on her cheeks.
She was changed in some subtle yet singular way: older, more contained, betraying in her reflection a curious gravity. As though possessing a quality of dignity and purpose, which hitherto she had lacked. Those light and vivid graces, the quick, impulsive movements, all were gone. And instead there was a consciousness of maturity; no longer the eager yet bewildered child; but now a woman.
Was she conscious of his furtive look? He couldn’t tell – he simply could not tell. It was grinding, the suspense, he felt it fasten upon him. It bound him so that he could scarcely move. Those last two days it had been the same, and the five days before at Santa Cruz. Afraid to look at one another, rigid, constrained, never for a moment alone, dreading the banal words that must be spoken, each awaiting, yet avoiding a sign – a sign that never came.
He stared at her, his lips half parted, willing her with all his feeling to look at him. Surely she must look at him – one tiny look – it would be enough.
But she did not. She still looked straight ahead, her face shadowy and white, her chin pressed into the soft fur of her coat, her lashes lying darkly upon her cheek. And the next minute Fielding came through the cockpit. He handed himself aft breezily, and sank into the chair next to Harvey.
‘Haze is lifting on the floor,’ he announced, and slipped his arm companionably over the back of the seat. ‘We ought to have a sight of the Channel soon.’
‘Yes,’ Harvey answered flatly.
‘And then for the jolly old Solent. That’s where we strike the water again. Engine’s running beautifully and she’s not bumping a bit. Stanford says not more than an hour now. Absolutely on time. We’ll be drinking tea at Buckden’ – he considered his watch – ‘at five-fifteen to the tick. Dash it all if I’m not sorry in a way! It’s been a gorgeous trip. I hated it coming out – must have been anxious, p’raps. Besides – hate being alone. We’ve made a snug little party, the four of us. Blessed if I wouldn’t mind doin’ it all over again.’
Over her shoulder Elissa languidly interposed:
‘No. My God – no, not for ten thousand! –’ She yawned – reflected. ‘The thought of Dibs – marooned, you know, that alone keeps me from hysteria. I can see his face still, all worked up – the final look – hardly human. It’s really saving my life.’
Fielding laughed – without a shade of rancour. He said:
‘You’ll buck up when you get back, ’Lissa. Think of it. Spring in England – the hedges smelling of briar, blossom in the orchards –’
‘People holding up umbrellas and cursing when the wind blows them inside out. Mud in your eye from all the buses and never a taxi in sight. Oh, don’t be so damned encouraging, Michael. I can’t bear it. Go away and drive the engine. Send young Stanford in. I want to find out if he’s in love with me.’ She shot a malicious look at Harvey. ‘ I don’t see why Mary should monopolise the grand passion.’
Michael laughed louder than ever. He flung his other arm around Mary’s chair, linking her to Harvey with ridiculous affability.
‘You hear that, young funny. She’s exposing you – and your glorious flirtation.’
Harvey winced. But Mary, sitting there soft and passive, made no sign; her face remained quite unreadable. Elissa was staring curiously at Michael. At length she shook her head. ‘Sweet,’ she said briefly, ‘ and such a gentleman.’
He went on and finished his laugh, then he took out his cigarette-case, offered it to Harvey, who refused.
‘You know,’ he continued affably, ‘jokin’ apart, it is really good to get back.
Bein’ away makes a fellow appreciate his own country all the better. I’m dyin’ to show you Buckden. Remember that rose I was telling you about? It’s an extra special. And I must let you see my new almshouses. Funny – I’ve an extraordinary feelin’ for almshouses. Quite a hobby, don’t you know. My old man started them and I’ve kept on – you know – buildin’. I’m collectin’ centenarians – like another fellow might go in for butterflies. I’ve got an old codger there only three months short of a hundred and two. Why–’
Harvey shut his ears. He knew Fielding now – knew him with a knowledge both cold and final. He was, as Elissa said, a gentleman – oh, God, what a word! – but he was, for all the archaic horror of the term. Kind, charming, good-natured, he wouldn’t do an ill turn to a fly; he couldn’t – no, he simply couldn’t have an enemy in the world. But he never seemed quite serious. Yes, that was it – impossible for him to be serious. Nor would he argue. Contradicted, he dropped a thing, laughed, forgot about it. And he had no jealousy; he was utterly incapable of it. That had baffled Harvey for days. But now he knew it with perfect certainty for the keynote of Fielding’s easy indifference. Love had no meaning to him. He had for Mary a fondness: but that was all. How often Harvey had made up his mind to look him between the eyes – firmly, offensively.
‘Look here. I’m in love with your wife.’ But it wouldn’t have been the slightest use. He wouldn’t have said: ‘Damn you, what do you mean?’ He wouldn’t even have said: ‘ What impertinence!’ He would have laughed with perfect equanimity: ‘My dear fellow, I’m not in the least surprised. She’s charming. Try one of these. They’re Turkish, but quite mild.’ There was something terrifying in this inexorable good nature. The fact struck Harvey with deadening conviction. Oh, the whole thing was maddening. Better, far better, to batter one’s head into a brick wall than against this soft and unresisting cushion of down.
‘- And that,’ concluded Fielding, ‘really would please me. To break eighty. But only using one hand, mind you. That’s the joke. It’d take a bit of doing. Fiendishly difficult course.’
