Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  Hilary had conceived the excellent idea of sending Rupert to Russia, to work on a collective farm, and Denis to Italy, to continue his education in a Roman school.

  ‘If Rupert is a Communist he ought to see something of Communism in action,’ she said, ‘and as Denis is a Fascist, he’ll feel more at home in Italy than in England. If their political views are well-founded, the experience will be valuable, and if they change their minds they can just come home again.’

  Denis and Rupert warmly approved the idea, but did not let it interfere with their present enthusiasm for sailing and fishing and mountain-climbing. The younger children were also showing signs of becoming politically minded, and as Cecily avowed a romantic admiration for Mr de Valera, while Patrick protested his fervent sympathy with the Catalonian Separatists, and Rosemary and Peter had become Scottish Nationalists, it seemed as though the new generation of Ganders – the Vicar had bravely determined to adopt the name – might achieve a wide geographical distribution.

  It was evident, however, that the Vicar would become Hilary’s permanent care. He was growing rapidly older. By the publication of what he still imagined to be his shame, he had achieved peace; but it was the peace of premature age. He was happy, but happy to be inactive. Hilary, who had so recently discovered him to be her brother, soon began to think of him with the protective feeling due to an older generation. She had already taken full charge of the children, and assumed responsibility for the future of the household. The children manifestly enjoyed her light authority, and the future – if indeed time will admit of control – was in good hands.

  Mr Peabody had no holiday that summer. He was too busy. He investigated and confirmed the Vicar’s claim, he took counsel’s opinion, he interviewed the other members of the family. He advised Katherine that litigation would be expensive and unprofitable. He informed them that the Vicar desired to offer each of them a solatium of five thousand pounds – the Major’s residual seventy thousand pounds had become nearly eighty thousand in the little cheerful prosperity of 1934 – and he finally persuaded them that it was time to wind up the estate.

  As he said to his sister, ‘A will like that is simply an invitation to trouble. I’ve had trouble enough with it already, and I want no more. A man who is fool enough to draw his own will should claim an early resurrection and come back to execute it. During his lifetime I had a great respect for the Major, but since his death I have had none. His will condoned, perhaps deliberately, what I for one think of as immorality, and it was a powerful incentive to fraudulent practice. Nor can I reconcile my memory of Jonathan Gander …’

  ‘I remember him quite well,’ Miss Peabody interrupted. ‘He was a handsome man, and he often made humorous remarks. I always admired him. When I was a little girl he used to give me sweets called Grandmama’s Bon-bons. You can’t get them nowadays.’

  Chapter 24

  Stephen and Wilfrid came back to Lammiter in September. They had spent a delightful holiday in Brittany and were most engagingly sunburnt. The Mulberry School of Journalism and Short Story Writing had had a profitable year, and Stephen, with his unexpected windfall of five thousand pounds, was busily making plans to enlarge his establishment. But what excited them even more than their bright vision of a college busy with five assistants, ten stenographers, and the constant arrival of cheques, was to see waiting for them a proof copy of Stephen’s new book of poems. Wilfrid carried it into the garden, and beneath a tempered sun they sat down to read it.

  Stephen had turned again to literature after his disastrous engagement to Bolivia, and found in that strenuous exercise, as many men have found, both comfort and forget-fulness. He had, moreover, invented what he believed to be a new technique in poetry, or at the best a new linear design, and the novelty had been sufficient to win approval from a publisher. The book was already advertised, and described in the most flattering way, in his autumn list.

  It was called A Hundred Patterns, and consisted of a hundred short poems printed in geometrical forms. By this device, or so Stephen believed, their literal content became diagrammatic: a transformation cleverly designed to appeal to an age whose culture was largely dictated by machinery. Their meaning, in other words, was made manifest, for those who found difficulty in reading, by linear design, or isomorphism, or other spatial harmonies. The first of the poems was a very simple example called The Paradox. It read, and looked, as follows:

  ‘You see,’ said Stephen, ‘the rise and fall in the verse is made marvellously clear by the pattern, and that double rise and fall is typical of human life. The first upstroke is youth. Then, after about the age of thirty, there’s a descent to forty-five, during which the contemplative or spiritual part of Man is dominated by economic circumstances and the necessity of productive work. Then we go up again, not on a spiritual ascent, but on a gradual emergence of philosophy, which may be either good or bad, but is generally serviceable. The second peak is about sixty years old. Even though it only represents material success, it is still a peak; sometimes, however, it represents a considerable worldly knowledge, or even wisdom. The second down-stroke is physical decline, and the end is death.’

  Wilfrid said, ‘I think it’s perfectly wonderful …’

  ‘But there’s more in it than that,’ said Stephen, ‘because in shape it is a diagrammatic representation of waves. It represents waves as a child would draw them, and nowadays, of course, only children really know how to draw. And as waves are a symbol of eternity, so this poem is symbolic of the everlastingness of life, or it would be if it were repeated over and over again. It seems to me, in fact, that it really represents, or even draws, the essential quality of life more simply and more compellingly than has ever been done before.’

  ‘It really is a marvellous poem,’ said Wilfrid. ‘But I think I like this one almost as much.’ He pointed to a stellate arrangement:

  ‘I’m not quite sure about that one,’ said Stephen judicially. ‘It’s just a little bit cynical. The Star of Hope, you see, combined with rather bitter denigration. No, it’s just a shade too clever to be really good. But here’s one that’s very nearly perfect.’

  Wilfrid turned the proof, turned it upside down and round again, to read a poem like a picture-frame or double square:

  ‘It ought really’, said Stephen, ‘to be a series of infinitely receding squares, to show the levels of thought or desire receding into the depths of the sub-conscious. But there were technical difficulties in the way, because the printer’s smallest type was Nonpareil, and that didn’t in the least suggest invisibility. So I thought it better to be quite simple, and merely give an impression of inwardness and reculade. And I do think it’s effective, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s like one of those lovely Chinese boxes’, said Wilfrid, ‘with a little box inside it, and a littler one inside that, and so on, till the very last of all is absolutely tiny and most exciting.’

  ‘I thought you’d understand,’ said Steven gratefully. ‘If all critics were as clever and helpful as you are, there’d be more hope for the future of English literature.’

  Wilfrid blushed with pleasure and cried, ‘Oh, Stephen! how awfully nice of you to say that!’

  In this mood of kindness and mutual esteem they continued to read the poems with unfailing appreciation. A thin haze diffused the sun and shed upon the garden a warm powdery light. Leaf and fruit were tinted with September’s mellow hues, and Wilfrid and Stephen, themselves coloured by hot weather, had an appearance of well-being that was agreeable to the season and their surroundings. But their happiness, unlike that of the anchored trees and the pendant fruit, made them restless and eager for movement. They wanted to show-off the poems and excite a wider admiration.

  ‘Let’s go and show them to Arthur,’ Wilfrid suggested. ‘He really has very good taste in some ways, and I’m sure he’ll like them. He can’t help liking them!’

  Stephen found the proposal agreeable, and in a few minutes they were walking briskly, talking amicably, along the Ri
dge road. A little while before they reached Hornbeam Lane, however, their conversation was interrupted by the imperative blast of a motor-horn. A car, approaching, had abruptly reduced speed, and stopped a few yards beyond them. They looked round and saw a beckoning hand, a young woman’s hand, imperative as the horn.

  Stephen turned a little pale. Wilfrid’s muscles grew taut and defensive. They hesitated. The hand grew more insistent. Reluctantly they obeyed, and with uneasy minds approached the car.

  Bolivia had been abroad for the better part of a year. They had not seen her since that dreadful night when she and her father were beaten frorn the door of Mulberry Acre by a bombardment of books. They were, not unnaturally, ill-at-ease. But Bolivia showed no sign of embarrassment. She greeted them calmly, with friendly condescension. She was looking well, and was smartly dressed. Sitting beside her was a young man, very handsome, rather sallow, dark-haired, soigne, admirably tailored. He seemed hardly so broad or so tall as Bolivia, but his figure was lithe and active, his expression was full of energy.

  ‘This is my fiancé, the Marchese Cellini di Boccadimagra,’ said Bolivia.

  The Marchese made himself agreeable, and Stephen and Wilfrid, standing in the road, felt the disadvantage of their position.

  ‘Is Jane here?’ Bolivia asked. ‘I’d like to play some golf if she is.’

  ‘She’s gone to America,’ said Stephen.

  ‘She’ll be away for a whole year,’ added Wilfrid. ‘She’s going to play golf all over the country, and go in for lots of tournaments, and have a perfectly lovely time. I helped her to buy clothes before she went, and honestly, Bolivia, if you saw her frocks you’d die with envy!’

  ‘She must have come into some money,’ said Bolivia.

  ‘She has,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Good,’ said Bolivia. ‘Well, we must be getting on. I may see you later. I’m getting married next month, and I’ll be here till then. Good-bye, Stephen. You’re not as fat as you used to be. Good-bye, Wilfrid.’

  ‘Well!’ said Wilfrid, ‘she is a horrid girl! I hate her as much as ever. And I’m terribly sorry for the Marchese, because I liked him very much indeed, and she’s bound to make him miserable.’

  Stephen said nothing.

  ‘Did it worry you, seeing her again? Don’t think any more about her.’

  ‘She means nothing to me,’ said Stephen.

  ‘She just hated me when I told her about Jane’s frocks,’ said Wilfrid happily. ‘She went simply livid with rage. I was going to tell her a lot more about them, that’s why she went away so quickly, because she knew just what I was thinking, of course, and she couldn’t bear to listen. She wants to tell everybody that she’s going to marry a Marchese, but she doesn’t want to hear anything about anybody else’s good luck. I’m so glad I made her angry. But I do hope she’ll ask us to the wedding. I love weddings: they’re so emotional. I think I’ll give her some rather nice brandy glasses, because they’ll be more use to the Marchese than to her.’

  Wilfrid chattered all the way to Hornbeam House. They met Arthur just inside the gate. He carried a walking-stick, and he was solemnly beheading a fine growth of tall blue Michaelmas Daisies.

  ‘Arthur!’ cried Wilfrid. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

  Arthur turned a grim face to them. ‘These flowers,’ he said, ‘though you may not believe me, told my wife that beauty was truth, and if a man lived as sweetly and healthily as they did he would never grow fat or bald. That was this morning. Yesterday they told her she was bound to be misunderstood by human beings, because her nature was too fine and delicate for their gross perception; but her flowers would always understand her, and sympathize with her, and though they hated to see her cry, yet her tears were as grateful to them as the morning dew.’

  Arthur struck down another bloom. ‘Gome and have a drink,’ he said. On the way to the rock garden he swung viciously at a rose-pink Kaffir Lily. ‘That damned hybrid told her that God meant our hearts to be full of joy,’ he explained. ‘And those pansies have been babbling and blethering to her all summer. But they won’t babble any more.’

  The long border of pansies, indeed, had suffered total execution. A scythe lay at one end of it, and all the way down was a little, scattered, multicoloured rivulet of decapitated flowers. ‘Garrulous things, pansies,’ said Arthur.

  ‘But what will Daisy say?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘There’ll be a row,’ said Arthur briefly.

  This ruthless destruction, and the grimness of Arthur’s manner, filled Stephen and Wilfrid with awe.

  ‘I never did like gardening,’ said Arthur, ‘but for Daisy’s sake I pretended to, and if she were reasonable I’d go on pretending. But she isn’t. She won’t be satisfied with flowers that do nothing but grow; she wants them to tell her things. And they do: or so she says. They tell her the sickliest, dampest, out-of-tune, futile, false simplicities, I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard enough of them.’

  He strode purposefully to a Red-Hot Poker and uprooted it. ‘That thing told her something about the soul of a little child’, he said, ‘that I’d be ashamed to repeat. Have another drink.’

  Stephen began to discuss the historical aspect of the Pathetic Fallacy, but Arthur begged him to say no more about it.

  Wilfrid said, ‘We really came to show you Stephen’s new poems. They’re rather wonderful, and I’m sure they’re going to be a tremendous success.’

  Arthur showed a very flattering interest in the triangles, pentagons, spirals, ladders, and other shapes – the crenellated, zoomorphous, right-angled or whirligig shapes – of Stephen’s invention. He turned the book this way and that, and read some six or seven poems aloud, to which Stephen listened with a critical ear and an approving smile.

  ‘Here’s another very good one,’ said Arthur. ‘Now I call this really clever, and it’s sound stuff too.’

  He pointed to a word-embroidered swastika.

  ‘Perhaps that’s just a little crude,’ said Stephen. ‘I think, on the whole, it’s a mistake to bring current events into poetry. Poetry should be timeless and universal, applicable to the present moment only because the moment is part of all time.’

  ‘Well, you know more about it than I do,’ said Arthur. ‘I only know what I like; and I like that one. I like ’em all, Stephen. You’re a damned clever fellow, and here’s my very best wishes for the success of your book!’

  In this admirable harmony they discussed the poems for a little longer, and then Arthur said, ‘I had a letter from George the other day. We’re in business together now, you know, and he told me to expect a handsome dividend in a few months’ time.’

  ‘What sort of business is it?’ asked Wilfrid.

  ‘Very private business,’ said Arthur with a knowing wink.

  ‘I think we all behaved very leniently to George,’ said Stephen.

  ‘He’s a very good fellow,’ said Arthur, ‘and those were two lovely girls he brought home with him. Especially Doris.’

  ‘I didn’t really like her,’ said Wilfrid.

  ‘She reminded me of a woman I knew in Constantinople,’ said Arthur.’ I don’t remember if I ever told you about her? Well, it was a curious little adventure. Not so unusual, or on so large a scale as some other affairs I’ve been mixed up in, but still quite interesting. It was useful, too, because I succeeded – almost entirely by luck, I don’t take much credit for it – in averting another war with Turkey. Have some more gin, and I’ll tell you about it.’

  Stephen and Wilfrid settled themselves comfortably, leaning against convenient stones in the rockery, and Arthur sipped his gin and ginger with a reflective air.

  ‘I went out to Constantinople with Harington,’ he said, ‘and Harington’s not only a brilliant soldier – I once told him that he and Plumer were the finest soldiers on the Western Front – but a brilliant administrator. He’s a statesman if ever there was one. And I’m proud of having saved his life, though actually it was more by luck than by anything else. Now I suppose you rememb
er the state of affairs in Constantinople in the latter part of 1920 and ’21?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Wilfrid.

  ‘Well, everything was in a great muddle,’ said Arthur. ‘The Allied Forces were in occupation, the Angora government was quarrelling with the Sultan’s government, the Greeks were making a thorough nuisance of themselves, the Turks were still fighting the Armenians, the Soviet was intriguing with Angora, and our job was very dangerous and very delicate. Constantinople was a hot-bed, an absolute hot-bed, of spies and plots and attempted assassinations. We’d a very nerve-racking time there, very nerve-racking indeed.

  ‘However, there were compensations, and I happened to meet a woman called – well, I used to call her Cecilia, because her own name was rather difficult to pronounce. She was an Armenian, a lovely creature, quite like Doris, but better-looking. I met her in a very casual way: a busy narrow street in Stamboul, the usual Oriental crowd, a porter fellow with a pole over his shoulder carrying a dozen sheepskins, still warm and dripping with blood, and Cecilia coming in the opposite direction: the porter fellow swung round, nearly slapped her with his horrid cargo, and I knocked him out of the road just in time: there was a bit of a rumpus, but I soon put a stop to that, Cecilia thanked me, and we walked away together.

  ‘Now in a place like Constantinople affairs of that kind develop quicker than they do here, and in a very short time she became my mistress. – I’m not boasting about it, I detest a man who brags about his love affairs, but there’s the fact, and there’s no use blinking it. – Now, as you know, a woman in love is a very confiding creature, and I soon discovered that Cecilia was a member of a small terrorist group, who believed that we, the British, that is, hadn’t given the Armenians a fair deal, and they were plotting some kind of revenge against us. However, Constantinople was full of plots, and most of them came to nothing at all, so I didn’t pay much attention to this one. In fact, I forgot all about it till I heard one day that Harington himself was going to have a secret interview with a couple of Armenians who pretended to have information of some tremendous kind that would break up the alliance between the Soviet and the Angora government. Information of that sort would have been invaluable, of course, and Harington, who was quite fearless, was probably justified in running the risk of interviewing these people himself.