Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  The road, curving and recurving, ran almost on top of the long ridge that rose west and south of Lammiter. The vicarage was in front of her and below her, on the southwestern slope of the ridge, separated by the road from the church and the little hill and what had once been the village of Lammiter West, but was now Lammiter’s most agreeable suburb. Grassy, and haphazardly wooded, criss-crossed by sweet-smelling untidy hedges, the country fell away into the shallow valley of the Greenrush, the narrow stream that slid so silently through the fields. It was a placid and a lovely view, but, for the moment, it was not comforting. Its loveliness could not be touched, for to grasp a leaf and to brush the grass gave no feeling of the valley as a whole; and its calmness would not comprehend her fear. Hilary, all of a sudden, felt a great desire to be in and of this happy soil, as the hawthorn and the elms were of it: not to be dead in it, but to live in it like a hedge with its flowers at her feet and its birds among her leaves. She was tired of the people who talked so foolishly to her, and complained to her, and of the necessity of death. She was even weary of herself.

  This descent into pessimism, however, was short-lived. She was a robust and sensible woman, neither given to absurd fantasies nor to the wickedness of belittling humanity. She was rather shocked by her momentary desire to become a hedge, and the shock was salutary. She mastered her fear and her foreboding, and walked on to the vicarage with a firm step.

  She found the Vicar on the terrace. He was staring at the garden with blank unseeing eyes. His shoulders were bent and his face had lost something of its high colour. Worry had always made him look plainer than he showed in his photographs, for instance, and now, as though the handsome line of his features had been held taut only by confidence or the effort of his will, his chin hung heavy, his cheeks were relaxed, and bewilderment was in his eyes. ‘He’s curiously like Arthur,’ Hilary thought, and bade him good morning.

  ‘You’ve done wonders with your garden,’ she said. ‘It looks as well as ever it did.’

  ‘The rose-garden doesn’t. Those wretched pigs did a lot of damage there.’ The Vicar spoke in a flat uninterested voice.

  ‘How’s Caroline?’ Hilary asked him.

  ‘She’s very ill. Griffiths was here an hour ago, and he’s coming back this afternoon.’

  ‘Dr Griffiths always takes the gloomiest view possible. I shouldn’t worry too much over what he says.’

  ‘He sounded her, and said there was still a lot of friction. And the pain in her side is worse. It’s very bad when she coughs.’

  ‘Can I go up and see her?’

  ‘I was just going myself; not that I can do any good, but she might want to tell me something.’

  They climbed a shallow stair and the Vicar silently opened the bedroom door. The nurse rose with a small crepitation of starched linen, and held up a warning hand. ‘She’s sleeping,’ she whispered.

  Lady Caroline lay with a dark flush on her cheeks. Her lips were pale and her breathing was hoarse and quick and shallow. Her body looked slightly contorted, and her left shoulder seemed higher than the right. A flicker of pain crossed her face.

  Hilary looked inquiringly at the nurse, who pursed her lips in a non-committal way. The Vicar muttered, ‘I think we’d better go down again.’

  They returned to the garden. ‘You know her brother Quentin has written to say that he’ll have to stop her allowance?’ said the Vicar.

  ‘Caroline’s allowance? Why?’

  ‘He’s a director of the Seahouse Investment Trust. They’ve gone into voluntary liquidation, and Quentin’s lost everything!’

  ‘But according to The Times they’re paying their creditors in full,’ said Hilary.

  ‘Yes, and Quentin’s bearing the brunt. It was he who insisted they must go into liquidation. He said his honour was at stake, and his honour’s costing him nearly half a million. What will happen to Charles I’ve no idea.’

  Of the late Duke of Starveling’s family only one had shown ability to cope with the modern world in as splendid a way as their ancestors had dealt with a simpler age. This was Lord Quentin Whicher, the second son, who, becoming a financier, had on three occasions made a very respectable fortune. His temperament was unstable, however, and as he was subject to devastating attacks of honesty he invariably threw away his millions as soon as he had amassed them. He had recently discovered fraudulent practice in the affairs of the Seahouse Investment Trust, and insisting upon its immediate liquidation with the violence characteristic of his honest periods, he had offered the whole of his current fortune to meet the Company’s liabilities. This lordly gesture, though good for his own soul, was disastrous to his two brothers and five sisters, all of whom were dependent on him. Charles, the present Duke, maintained Starveling Castle, in the northern part of the county, only by Quentin’s munificence, and for several years Quentin had given Lady Caroline an annual allowance of two thousand pounds.

  Hilary heard of the loss of this income with dismay. ‘But what are you going to do?’ she asked.

  The Vicar shook his head. ‘I don’t know, and I can’t think. I can’t even worry about it. It was a blow when the news came, but now I can’t think of anything but Caroline.’

  Hilary said, ‘It’s a pity you’re not eligible to compete for Uncle John’s estate. With six of a family you’d be an easy winner.’

  The Vicar looked uncomfortable‘‘It was a curious will,’ he said.

  ‘A very embarrassing will.’

  ‘What was the exact description of the possible legatees? “The legal offspring of the late Jonathan Gander”: was that it?’

  ‘“Whichever of the late Jonathan Gander’s progeny shall, five years from now, have become the parent of the largest family born in wedlock,”’ Hilary quoted, with reasonable accuracy.

  The Vicar looked more melancholy than ever. ‘Heaven knows how I’m going to give a decent education to the children now,’ he said.

  ‘I expect Quentin will make another fortune in a year or two,’ she suggested.

  A maid came running from the house. ‘Please, sir,’ she said, ‘her ladyship’s just woke up, and she’d like to speak to you, Nurse says.’

  The Vicar straightened his shoulders and seemed to grow more confident at once.’ Come back soon,’ he said to Hilary. ‘I hope you’ll be able to have a talk with her the next time.’

  Chapter 5

  The Ridge road that quarter-circled Lammiter was a social highway for the Ganders and most of their friends. Its northern terminus was the vicarage. Nearby, in Lammiter West, lived General Ramboise, and not far away were Miss Montgomery and Mrs Corcoran. Sir Gervase Flood had a house, stuffed full of tiger-skin rugs and ivory elephants and Benares brass, on the east side of the road, three quarters of a mile south of Lammiter West. Half a mile farther the road received, as a tributary, Hornbeam Lane, where Arthur lived, and where, at its lower and wetter end, his unprofitable estate was situated. Past Hornbeam Lane the road continued its southern course for ten minutes’ walking distance, curved broadly east, and began to skirt the extensive grounds of Rumneys, which stood on the north and higher side. Four hundred yards east of Rumneys a little white-painted gate, demurely set beneath a dark close-clipped arch of hollies, led, by a flagged path that presently divided and engirt the house, to the front door of Mulberry Acre.

  This was a cottage built after the Tudor style of architecture. It had not, it is true, been built in the days of the Tudor monarchs, but with the help of some old tiles and timbers a contemporary architect had constructed a pleasant little house sufficiently resembling, from the outside, a domestic building of the sixteenth century to warrant the use of the royal name. The interior decoration, however, made no pretence to antiquity, unless the Victorian era may be called antique: for the dining-room, by a pretty piece of affectation, had been furnished with Spanish mahogany and horsehair, with dignified portraits and steel engravings, with a little wax fruit and a chandelier.

  The principal bedrooms were boldly of their own age
. They were three in number, and they were similarly furnished. The two adjectives, aesthetic and ascetic, so like in sound and sometimes so antagonistic in meaning, had almost equal claims for priority in their description; for though the first bedroom was a symphony of green – the sheets were the pale hue of a duck’s egg, and the carpet was like the darker-than-emerald heart of an Atlantic wave – and though the second bedroom was a concordance in blue – the pillows were pale as a thrush’s eggs, the brushes on the dressing-table might have been backed with sapphire – and though the third bedroom was a harmony in yellow – the bed-linen was like primroses, and the walls were gold – yet the furniture in all of them was made of steel. The beds were steel, the chairs were steel, and the wardrobes, of steel and enamel, resembled safes. The bathroom escaped luxury only by the sombreness of its colour, which was black, save for the snowy towels and the snow-white mat.

  The drawing-room, which was shaped like the letter L, was also the study and the workroom. The furniture, ash-coloured, was pleasantly upholstered in old rose, and its walls were quaintly decorated with paintings by Braque, Paul Klee, and their Surréaliste disciples: the happy effect was of that peace which precedeth understanding and puberty. The low book-shelves that half-surrounded the room were mainly inhabited by poets. All the poetry published in England for the last twenty years was there, from Abercrombie to Auden, from Hassan to A Draft of XXX Cantos. There were also French poets. There was also a set, in forty volumes and Spanish, of the selected works of Lope de Vega.

  Stephen Sorley had spent a great deal of money, far more than he could afford, on the furnishing of Mulberry Acre, and till his uncle’s death had appeared to promise him substantial wealth he had found unfailing delight in his surroundings. But the prospect of riches had undermined his pleasure in imitation Tudor and steel furniture, and he had set his heart on purchasing the desirable Queen Anne house, five or six miles away, and decorating it, with academic precision, in the manner of the period. His hopes, of course, had been frustrated by the unexpected nature of the Major’s will, but the vision of the house, with its old brick walls and old silver candlesticks, stayed in his mind so obstinately and so painfully that he had done no work at all for the last three weeks. He had been quite unable to attend to the tedious business of correcting papers, reproving solecisms, and patting on their backs the occasional good phrases that appeared in the many exercises written by pupils of the Mulberry School of Journalism and Short Story Writing. Fortunately for Stephen, his friend Wilfrid was not only an extremely sympathetic young man, but also a very hard worker, and during Stephen’s indisposition Wilfrid had performed the duties of both without a word of complaint. He had, indeed, strongly advised Stephen to take a long holiday. ‘You’ve had a fearful shock,’ he had said, ‘and it would be horribly unfair to expect you to do a stroke of work till you’re quite better. I can manage perfectly well by myself. The only thing I can’t bear is to see you looking miserable, so just go and lie down and have a good rest, and I’ll finish these silly papers in no time.’

  The Mulberry School of Journalism – by correspondence – was a fairly successful business, and though Stephen truly disliked the drudgery of it, and despised it as the last unwanted hare-lipped bastard of literature, he was not unmindful of its profit, and he often gave considerable thought to the elaboration of advertisements by which to increase the number of their disciples. At times he could write preposterous rubrics without a trace of bitterness, without a memory of his own sterile labour to mock him as he scrawled in high capitals:

  HAVE YOU A PEN? THEN YOU CAN MAKE MONEY!

  A HOBBY WORTH £500 A YEAR.

  If you can write, you can write profitably!

  NO HARD WORK!

  NO DISAPPOINTMENT!

  The easiest way to earn your living

  is to write for it!!!

  But there were other days when he invented new captions with acid in his pen and his heart full of gall: ‘After six weeks’ tuition the majority of our students find no difficulty in writing acceptable articles, and, what is more, in selling them at their own price’: there was a pretty thing for him to say, he who had striven for years to give form to feeling that would not be expressed in words, to find in all the tortuous corridors of thought a subject, whole and complete, that he could dress with shining phrases, or, on a poor score of occasions, to sell what he had written for any price at all!

  Stephen for years had endeavoured to be a poet, and poetry had run away from him like a child at Blind Man’s Buff. Sometimes he had heard her laugh, heard the quick sound of her steps, and sometimes he had felt her frock. But he had never caught her. It was a sad pursuit, for he had a great desire to write poetry, and he had tried to in many styles. He had sought to compose tremendous simplicities in the early manner of Blake: and his simplicities were rarely simple and never tremendous. He had attempted Sitwellism and Prufrockery, but all in vain. He had tried to emulate the fiery hopes and indignation of the young post-post-war poets; but he lacked the faith to move magnetic mountains. He had essayed the composition of obscurely brilliant cloisonné work in the later fashion of Ezra Pound; but the effort to invent a meaning for his lines had defeated him.

  Nor could he find a style of his own. And this was strange, because he was more interested in himself than in anything or anyone else. He was egocentric to a far greater degree than Arthur, for instance. Arthur used himself like coloured spectacles through which to see the world, or like litmus paper on which to test the reaction of real or fancied experience. But Stephen looked only at himself, and this, perhaps, was part of the reason for his failure to achieve poetic vision: for he was fat enough to throw a large shadow.

  On the day following the day on which Hilary had gone to call at the vicarage, about six in the evening, Wilfrid sat correcting the last of a high bundle of exercises, when Mrs Barrow, the housekeeper, announced the arrival of Mr Arthur Gander. Arthur wore a somewhat apologetic air when he came in, for his only purpose in calling was to avoid a lecture on dietetics that was waiting for him at home: one of Daisy’s friends had just written to inform her that beans were a very strengthening food.

  Wilfrid behaved charmingly. ‘How nice of you to come and see us!’ he said. ‘No, really, I’m not busy, I’d just this moment finished. Stephen went to lie down after tea, he’s not really fit yet, but I expect he’ll be down in a little while. Mrs Barrow’s giving us chicken salad and iced gooseberry fool tonight, and he won’t want to miss that. Oh, do sit here, Arthur, this is a much more comfortable chair. I was just going to have a glass of sherry: you’ll have one too, won’t you?’

  ‘I’d rather have a little gin,’ said Arthur cautiously. ‘A pink gin, perhaps.’ Among Daisy’s other follies was a shrill hatred of wine and spirits, and Arthur was forced to conform with this injurious prejudice. He had fortunately discovered, however, that gin perfumes the breath so slightly, if at all, that he could drink comparatively large quantities of it without rousing her suspicion. He looked enviously at the decanter of straw-pale sherry, but sherry, like roses, bewrays its presence, and his glance returned with an accompanying sigh to the square and hueless bottle.’ Thank you, thank you, that’s plenty,’ he said.

  Presently Stephen came down. He was wearing a plum-coloured velvet jacket, and he looked pale and tired. He had been trying to write a poem about his own unhappiness: not a mere verse or two of complaint, not an angry squib, but a large and coruscating affair in which the Queen Anne house became the symbol of all artistic desire, and the deceased Major represented the crass and mundane world which for ever frustrated it. He had been working at the poem for a week. It was to be a compound of classical allusion, peacock phrases, assonance carefully substituted for rhyme, and brutally biting colloquialism. But so far it was not going very well. He had a very good dictionary of quotations, and the classical allusions were leading him too many ways at once. Nor could he contrive a proper sheen for the peacock phrases.

  Wilfrid poured a glass of s
herry for him, and he began to talk about the will. Wilfrid made sympathetic noises, and Arthur nodded his head and helped himself to a little more gin.

  After twenty minutes’ dissertation on the Major’s alleged iniquity, Stephen said, ‘And if it hadn’t been for Katherine we could probably have upset the will, or at any rate ignored it by mutual consent. She is, without exception, the most vulgar and selfish woman I’ve ever met. I’ve come across a lot of selfish people in my time – the egotist is always with us – but I’ve never seen anyone so utterly and shamelessly self-centred as she is. And simply because she’s married to a hulking brute of a soldier she has the chance to rob us all of our inheritance! It absolutely makes my blood boil. Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s staying with Oliver’s people, I think,’ said Arthur.

  ‘At Bognor,’ said Wilfrid. ‘But they’re going up to Scotland in August, to stay with some people called Maitland, who’re cousins of Oliver’s.’

  ‘Who told you so?’

  ‘Mrs Barrow. She was in town this afternoon, and she met Mrs Arbor, the housekeeper at Rumneys, and they had a long talk together. Hilary had a letter from Katherine this morning, and Katherine said she was having a perfectly lovely time with Oliver, and she hoped to be able to tell Hilary some very good news when she wrote next.’

  Stephen’s hand trembled as he refilled his glass. ‘It’s intolerable!’ he said. ‘Really, the way that human beings will degrade themselves, simply for money, is almost beyond belief!’

  ‘Money’s a great delusion,’ said Arthur gravely. ‘Of course it’s very useful to have some, but to make it one’s chief end in life is a terrible mistake. I’ve lost nearly all I had and I’m still fairly happy. I think I should be happier if I had another few hundreds a year, but I really don’t know. I find life very interesting as it is. I spend a good deal of my time thinking, you see, and one can do a lot of thinking on a very small income.’