Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  ‘That’s the best joke I’ve heard for years,’ he said. ‘Isn’t nature wonderful, as they say in the garden cities? But you can’t plant a tree one year, and expect to live in the shade the next. They should have started early, like me. I didn’t dash into paternity as a speculation: I was just a simple cock-eyed philoprogenitive. And by God, it’s paid! Leap before you look, Hilary. That’s the wise way! Leap before you look, and you’ll land in clover.’

  ‘Have you often found the four-leafed clover, Aunt Hilary?’ asked Tessie.

  ‘Well, I used to when I was younger. I haven’t looked for any lately.’

  Tessie sighed: ‘I am hoping to find some. It is jolly lucky. It means you will have a sweetheart.’

  They returned eagerly to the drawing-room fire. Doris said, ‘It would be nice to go somewhere and dance this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t dance today,’ said Hilary. ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘But in Bombay’, said Doris, ‘we have often danced on Sunday. There is a place called Green’s that we make a decided point of going to, on every Sunday afternoon when someone will take us. It is highly agreeable there, and quite a centre of attraction.’

  ‘You’ll find,’ said George, ‘that the amenities of the Orient often scandalize old England. I, who am like God because I despise respectability…’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Hilary.

  ‘God made man, but who made his loin-cloth?’ asked George amiably. ‘As I was about to say, England is lousy with restrictions, but there are many compensations. And the wise man learns to eat peas without cutting his mouth. I grow aphoristic, Hilary. After Sunday tiffin, and especially after port wine – to which I am not accustomed in the unkindly tropics – I become wordy, sententious, and, to tell the truth, rather a bloody nuisance, if you’ll admit such a word. Let us discuss Hinduism: the Hindu Trinity consists of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer, behind whom is Brahma the Universal Reality. Brahma the Creator, having created, retires hurt; Vishnu is sometimes said to be another form of Siva; and Siva is sometimes said to be another form of Vishnu. Furthermore, Vishnu the Destroyer is worshipped for his reproductive power, and his emblem is the phallus. His wife, Kali, is the Mother of the World, and dances on his chest with a string of skulls round her neck. The favourite love story of the Hindus is that of Krishna and Radha: Krishna was an incarnation of Vishnu, and his fame as a romantic hero rests on the fact that while his sweetheart Radha was looking for hirn in the woods, he was playing kiss-in-the-ring with a hundred milk-maids in Brindaban. But this, of course, is the ultimate simplification of Hinduism. Shall I say anything about its actual complications? Shall I mention some of its ten thousand lesser deities, and the intricate philosophy of their several million devotees? Perhaps not. Shall I say anything about the four thousand caste distinctions? No. Yet there are Brahmans who inherit not only social superiority but sanctity, in the same way as I shall inherit seventy thousand pounds, who live by eating other people’s sins, and are properly despised for this practice; and in Madras there are beggars who do the work of Dr Barnardo by adopting deformed children; and that, to a simple man like me, is very interesting. But far, far more interesting is the curious circumstance that these Hindus – about 280,000,000 of them – have for several generations been ruled and governed by Members of Parliament whose only comparable subtlety has been their ability to distinguish between Free Trade and Tariff Reform. This proves beyond doubt that the first verse of Rule Britannia records an actual fact, and when ignorant foreigners say that Heaven did it for a joke, they’re underestimating the place of humour in God’s Providence. Now let me tell you something about the Indian princes….’

  Meanwhile, from about eleven o’clock till half past two, Daisy had been hardly less voluble than George. Arthur had briefly described to her the composition of George’s family, and their mere enumeration had incarnadined her cheeks with helpless anger. That George the wastrel should come home with five, while she, virtuous she, had painfully borne but two! It was intolerable. Then Arthur had foolishly let fall the fact that Doris and Tessie were lovely beyond the expectation or experience of a quiet domestic man; and Daisy’s anger knew no bounds but the genteel circumference of her vocabulary. Had she had words enough she would have made them rattle like hail on a tin roof; but a polite schooling has its disadvantages, and all she could do, after monotonous reiteration of her discontent, was to weep over the Sabbath roast and, half an hour later, take the unexpended portion of her disappointment to the garden, where, in words of one or two syllables, befitting her audience, she told it to the flowers. And Daisy’s flowers were never unresponsive. They knew her, she said; though it must be admitted that she did not always know them.

  Arthur, having seen that the nurse – whose wages he would have some difficulty in paying – had properly scalded the bottle from which his infant son had fed, wondered how he should spend the afternoon. The baby was thriving, though Daisy and the nurse had flatly refused to have anything to do with the ingenious labour-saving cage he had constructed for it. He thought of devising some simple apparatus for educating its reflexes, but came to the conclusion that it would be waste of time, as female obscurantism would be sure to boycott it. He thought of seeking refreshment on the far side of the rockery; and then found that Daisy was in the garden, so that was no good. Then it occurred to him that he might call at Rumneys. It would be gracious to go and have a talk with George; it would show that he bore him no ill will, and was prepared to accept defeat in a sporting spirit; and it would be interesting, merely on sociological grounds, to see Doris again.

  The latter inducement, he found, was more cogent than the former. The thought of Doris inspired in him such sensations as he had not known for several years. His hand was trembling as he put on his hat, and impatience hurried his steps. But when he came near to Rumneys he was assailed by sudden diffidence: he felt, as he had often felt when he was a small boy, that he would not know what to say to her: and telling himself that he had really only come out for a walk, he passed the house with his head averted. A mile farther on, confidence was re-born; he stopped, and returned the way he had come. He felt perfectly confident, and master of the social arts, till through the trees he saw, cynically shining in the sun like a monocle, a dormer window in the steep roof of Rumneys; and it seemed to him that George and Hilary would guess at once the true purpose of his visit, and he would appear ridiculous. Again he passed the tempting drive, and walked on to Lammiter West, beyond the Vicarage, and sat for a little time in earnest thought upon a stile.

  When for the third time he came to Rumneys his mind was resolute, and he rang the bell without a tremor. He found Doris alone; for George had gone for a walk, Hilary was sitting by Katherine’s bed in the nursing home, and Tessie – Arthur had passed her, without seeing her, on the opposite side of the road – had just caught sight of Sergeant Pilcher, at the top of Hornbeam Lane, looking very smart in his blue patrol jacket and gold chevrons. Arthur, with a fine assumption of ease, asked Doris if she thought she was going to enjoy living in England….

  Katherine, like Daisy, was particularly incensed by the news that George had two beautiful daughters. ‘And their mother was a native, was she?’ she demanded bitterly.

  ‘Well,’ said Hilary, ‘I’m afraid they’re not pure white, though I must admit that the complexion of the elder girls is very attractive. The little boys are darker, though.’

  ‘Just an ordinary chi-chi family,’ said Katherine. ‘Heaven only knows the sort of life that George has been leading. My own brother, with children like that! And I suppose you realize what effect this is going to have on Oliver? His career will be ruined. He can’t possibly stay in his regiment if it becomes known that he has a mob of chi-chi relations.

  ‘They’re your relatives, not his.’

  ‘And that makes it worse, if anything, because people will say he’s deliberately married one of them. They may even think that I’m black too. Do
n’t you see how fatal it all is?’

  ‘I think you’re exaggerating the consequences.’

  ‘I’m not! A girl like this Doris, or – what’s her name? Tessie! – can ruin anybody’s reputation.’

  ‘That seems possible.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m saying! And I’m not going to meet George, I’m not going to see any of his family. I’m going to Bognor as soon as they can manage to fetch me, and I shan’t come back so long as George is here. He’s my brother, I know, but I don’t admit the relationship. He can’t expect me to, after behaving like this. I’ve got Oliver’s future to think of now. He’ll have to be transferred somewhere or other, because obviously he can’t remain in India. We’ll have to start pulling strings immediately. His father has a lot of influence, thank heaven, because otherwise, I . suppose, there’d be nowhere for us to go but Kenya.’

  Katherine talked for a long time in this vein. Then she took’ up the telephone at her bedside and ill-temperedly asked for a trunk-call to Bognor. Her voice, however, became soft and plaintive when she spoke to her mother-in-law and told her the tentative plan she had made. Hilary endured her comments and self-pity for another half-hour. She did not enjoy them, but she was insufficiently selfish to abbreviate her visit merely because she found it unpleasant. Then she saw the twins being bathed. They also were noisy. Hilary felt rather tired when at last she said good-bye to Katherine.

  She walked home beneath a pleasant sky, and at the entrance to Rumneys she abruptly met Arthur, who was coming out. He wore his hat carelessly, somewhat on the back of his head, and his expression was amiable with that faraway and foolish look which is characteristic of a mild and pleasant state of intoxication. Nor was he looking, with sufficient care, to see where he was going: he and Hilary almost collided. But he was quite sober.

  He replied vaguely to her startled greeting.

  ‘When did you get here?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘About five o’clock. Or perhaps a little earlier, yes, a little earlier, I should think.’

  ‘I didn’t go out till half past four. You must just have missed me.’

  ‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘Oh, no, not at all, not at all.’ He was in the grip of some experience as powerful as the hairdresser’s engine that gives enduring undulations to a lady’s hair. His consciousness, by the application of heat and pressure, had acquired a permanent wave; and its smooth satisfied ripples were reflected in his shining face.

  Chapter 19

  With unusual respect for an appointment, George arrived at Mr Peabody’s office punctually at half past eleven on Monday morning. He carried a bulky blue envelope that he laid on Mr Peabody’s table with easy triumph.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Seventy thousand pounds’ worth of legal documents, Peabody. Take ’em up tenderly, handle with care: sealed, signed, and indisputable, every one of them: and my passport to a lazy old age. “Why should we toil alone, we only toil, who are the first of things?’”

  ‘This’, said Mr Peabody, ‘is a copy of your marriage certificate to Teresa Rose Mahoney D’Souza?’

  George agreed. ‘“Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, and dear the last embraces of our wives,”’ he added. ‘I’m in a poetical mood this morning.’

  ‘And here is her death certificate, and here – one, two, three, four, five – certificates, or copies of them, of the birth of your children?’

  ‘We spared no expense,’ said George. ‘Everything possible has been done for them, and they all possess documentary evidence of the facts of life.’

  Mr Peabody minutely scrutinized the papers. ‘You have been resident in India since 1912?’ he asked.

  ‘Legally, yes; actually, no,’ said George. ‘I’m not a vegetable. I’ve moved about a bit.’

  ‘You came home, for varying periods, on several occasions.’

  ‘Three times,’ said George. ‘And I was in Mesopotamia during the War, I’ve been twice to America, once to Mombasa, and once in Hong-Kong.’

  ‘Perhaps you could give me the dates of your absences from India?’

  ‘They’re all there, on that piece of paper, and you can check up on a lot of them from my passport. It was issued in 1924 and renewed in 1929, so the different visas show where I’ve been during the last ten years.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Peabody. ‘That will be very useful. Now I think you had better leave these documents with me for a few days.’

  ‘While you compare the dates and make sure that none of my children were conceived during their father’s absence abroad, eh? All right, Peabody. Go ahead. You’re going to be disappointed. They were all born at the appropriate times. Neither Nature nor their poor mother ever made a mistake.’

  ‘Why did you never reveal the fact that you were married?’

  ‘It was nobody’s business but mine. Why should I?’

  ‘It’s customary to notify one’s relatives of such an event.’

  ‘Only when the relatives are going to be gratified by the news.’

  Mr Peabody painfully raised his eyebrows into an expression of inquiry.

  ‘I’m the only one of the family who isn’t a snob,’ said George. ‘I married to suit myself, but I realized that Tessie – my wife – wouldn’t suit the taste of my charming cousins, my affectionate sister, my revered uncle, or my beloved Hilary. Because her parentage happened to be a little mixed: her mother was Irish on the one side, but definitely tropical on the other; and her father was said to be Portuguese, but as he was born in Goa his complexion was rather dark. So was my wife’s. And as I hate to embarrass people, I said nothing about it.’

  Mr Peabody pursed his lips and tapped upon his desk with a yellow pencil.

  ‘It looks as though I’m the heir, doesn’t it?’ said George.

  ‘The residue of your uncle’s estate is not payable till – let me see: I have forgotten the date – about fifteen months from now. If these documents are authentic – and I see no reason to doubt their authenticity – and if, during the next fifteen months, children in sufficient numbers are borne neither to Mrs Arthur Gander nor to Mrs Clements …’

  ‘Try to be human, Peabody! They can’t possibly beat me in the time, and even to make a dead-heat of it they’d have to have triplets. And you’re not going to pretend that that’s likely.’

  ‘From the legal point of view …’

  ‘From the common-sense point of view! I’m the heir apparent, and you’ve got to admit it.’

  ‘If I can say so without indiscretion,’ said Mr Peabody carefully, ‘it does indeed seem probable, failing any unforeseen occurence or the emergence of as yet undiscovered but pertinent facts, that you will eventually succeed in establishing your claim to the Major’s estate.’

  ‘Eventually succeed!’ exclaimed George. ‘Good God, I have succeeded. I’ve got five children and a ream of certificates! What more do you want?’

  ‘I may find it desirable to take counsel’s opinion,’ said Mr Peabody.

  ‘Well, the sooner you get things settled, the better I’ll be pleased. Because I’m on the rocks,’ said George. ‘And as we know the money’s mine, I think I can touch you for a small advance, can’t I? I had to borrow money from a friend for our fares home, and I want to repay it as soon as possible. So be a good fellow and let me have – oh, say five hundred, will you?’

  Mr Peabody shook his head: ‘That would be most irregular.’

  ‘I’m on the rocks,’ George repeated. ‘The girls need new clothes, and so do I. And I’m in debt to my old friend Fewsher.’

  ‘I can do nothing without consulting my fellow trustee,’ said Mr Peabody.

  ‘Hilary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’ll be all right. Don’t worry about her. Give me a hundred, anyway, and the rest can wait.’

  Five minutes later Mr Peabody yielded so far as to give George a cheque for ten pounds. George accepted it without prejudice, and in the course of the next couple of hours renewed his friendship with several time-worn h
abitues of the Green Dragon.

  But though his manner was hearty it soon became evident that George had determined to behave with reasonable propriety. Neither on that day nor any following day did he drink beyond the use of judgement, or show the effect of drink except in such venial respects as a louder laugh, a certain verbosity, and a brightness of the eye. He subjected his more unruly instincts to constant discipline; and to the great relief of the Education Committee, the young female teachers of Lammiter found they could walk abroad, even after dark, without being molested. George made no secret of the reason for his changed behaviour. ‘As a man of property,’ he said, ‘or as a man of prospective property, I intend to conduct myself with a certain dignity. I propose to be affable, but not vulgar. Gone are the happy days when I used to please myself, and myself alone, and take no thought for the morrow. Carpe diem is a poor man’s motto: a rich man must take care of his health and think of the future: there’s no use dying of a plethora when you can live in plenty. So now I’m practising like hell for the honourable exercise of genuflecting in the House of Rimmon. Which is a bloody sensible thing to do.’

  Doris also behaved with considerable decorum, though it is doubtful whether she deserved the whole credit for this. It was her misfortune that she preferred men of middle age, or even advancing years, to youth; and the gathering years, especially in a place like Lammiter, bring caution, poverty of spirit, and a more than arterial sclerosis. Her first encounter with Arthur was also her last. Intoxicating though he found it at the time, it proved frightening in retrospect, and he afterwards avoided her, justifying his timidity on the grounds of decency and policy. Thereafter she scraped acquaintance with a retired chemist, a handsome old man who spent his mornings in the Memorial Park, and found to her disappointment that his only interest was British Colonial postage-stamps; she wasted some time pursuing a portly bank-manager who, every evening, took his walk accompanied by a dachshund; and she flirted unsuccessfully with Mr Glade, the florist in Green Street, who once gave her a carnation. But in justice to her it must be admitted that these expressions of interest were unostentatious – in comparison, at least, with Tessie’s activities – and apparently of no great significance to her. They suggested the behaviour of a lady who, by mere habit of amiability, makes herself agreeable to other guests while her husband is engaged with their hostess. For Doris’s favourite companion was her father. With him she was always happy, and the gossips of Lammiter began to entertain a more favourable opinion of her, and of George also, when they saw how devoted to each other they were, and how their constant pleasure was in taking long walks together. It was only when her father was busy elsewhere that she opened the dark languor of her eyes to the bank-manager or to Mr Glade.