by Ursula Bloom
The lovely shadow had found a face!
The little box with Anne Hathaway’s cottage on it held his studs. Once his father had seen it; had picked it up and examined it closely.
‘Queer!’ he said; and then, ‘where did you get this?’
Hugo lied. He said, ‘Emily sent it to me.’ It was the only thing that he could think of, and his father accepted it. The photograph and the hairpin box ranked with the model of the ship which Mr. Binns had given him long ago, and were treasures in the fullest sense of the word.
Hugo received a letter from his grandfather in the middle of the Easter term. It was in a spidery old writing, exceedingly difficult to follow, and it sprawled across the thin paper. The old man had been ill with his asthma again, and the lichen of the years, but he appreciated the photograph and the card, and in return enclosed something of Daisy’s, which he thought Hugo might like to have. The boy lifted out a piece of paper, folded over into three, the ends threaded into one another. On it, in the same spidery writing but browned with the rust of time, was written, ‘Daisy’s hair. June, 1897’. The boy opened the packet very cautiously, and there, curled round as brightly as a piece of spun glass, was a baby’s curl. Hugo had never seen anything so gay; it was fluffy, like the youthful down on a duckling; it was like palm blossom in the full gold of pollen on the dark branch of winter. Daisy’s hair, and Daisy had been a little child in 1897.
One day, when Hugo was walking round the close and going in the direction of the chapel, he was called back to receive a telegram, signed ‘Thompson’. He had practically forgotten Dr. Thompson, and had difficulty in remembering who he could be; then knew that he had been the doctor, and as such had probably sent the wire. His grandfather was very ill and would Hugo please come along as soon as he could?
Hugo took the telegram to his housemaster. ‘I could cycle over there,’ he said, and he had gone red with apprehension.
‘Very good,’ said the master.
Hugo started at once. It was a lovely spring day, but with a sharp spring wind swinging across from the sea, and bringing with it that smell of salt-washed weed which he had noticed that time when he had walked with Emily to Eastney, long ago, when staying at Portsmouth. He pedalled hard, and his calves began to throb with the exercise and his head to become over clear, whilst his ears stung from the wind which whipped them mercilessly. But he went on, until he saw Canterbury in the distance, and came to the turn which branched away from the main road.
He went through the village of red Kentish houses, and saw the old slumped gate, still unmended, and probably a trifle more sagged than last time. The laurel was putting forth new leaves, bright against the old dingy ones, and he could see that the daffodils were out, in smudges of yellow against the faded facade of the house.
He went inside, propping his bicycle against the syringa, just beginning to show green, and going to the door. It was closed. He rang the bell, and had to do it again. Then he heard steps, and the door was opened barely a few inches, so that he could see the malevolent face of Mrs. Morse, with the brass globes in her ears.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘Dr. Thompson telegraphed for me to come.’
‘He had no right.’
‘But he said that my grandfather was ill.’
‘Yes, and he is ill. He won’t get better. He’ll be dead by the morning.’
A sense of fear sent Hugo’s mouth dry; he himself was so full and radiant with life that the thought of death was awesome. He did not know what to do, and stood there nervously, not knowing how to challenge this woman.
‘But Dr. Thompson did send for me,’ he said at last, only too well aware of the feebleness of his protest.
‘I don’t care. You aren’t coming in. Your mother broke his heart, marrying for money the way that she did; and she got paid out! As you make your bed so you must lie in it, I always says. Well, she made it hard, and hard she found it, and you’ll find it hard too. No, you’re not coming in here.’
She was just shutting the door in his face when there came the sound of the crazy little car that the doctor drove. It was making its way with hiccoughy reluctance up the weedy drive; it drew level with the hall door and stopped.
‘Why, if it isn’t the lad!’ said the doctor.
Hugo was so relieved to see him that before he could stop himself he had said, ‘She won’t let me in.’
‘She won’t let you in? Mrs. Morse, what is the idea? This boy is the last kith and kin of the old man, and he has a right to be here.’
Mrs. Morse opened the door wider. She said nothing, but stood, her hands folded, staring forbiddingly at them, almost as though she were an executioner waiting to carry out sentence. Dr. Thompson put a hand on Hugo’s shoulder and marched him in before him.
‘You come with me,’ he said.
They went up the stairs, with the thready carpet showing more than ever the warp and woof of the pattern which had long since faded to nothing. They went along the landing with the oil paintings spotted with mould and the fly-blown cabinet in the corner. The doctor opened a door and ushered Hugo in. The boy was afraid. He had never seen death before, and felt his heart sinking and making a noise; the sweat came out on his head, pricking so that it almost hurt.
Inside he saw a big room with mahogany furniture, and an ottoman sofa, all old and ragged, and marked with the stains of time.
The bed was a large half-tester, and the hangings were of green damask, bought in a past generation, and never repaired or cleaned since they had first been put there. In the bed lay the old man. He lay stiffly, as though he were already a corpse, but with his mild, childlike face turned to the west and about his pale pink brow the thistledown of hair. He looked very little different from how he had appeared the last time, only now he lay in bed, and the boy knew that he would never walk again.
‘I’ve brought someone to see you,’ said Dr. Thompson, ‘someone you’ll be glad to have here. Look!’
The pallid blue eyes flickered for a second, then turned in the boy’s direction. They brightened. ‘It’s the boy,’ he said, and smiled.
Hugo took hold of the hand lying on the quilt. ‘I’m sorry that you’re so ill, grandfather; I do hope you’ll be better soon.’ He knew that the words were silly, and that, although he did wish it, his grandfather would never be better in this world.
‘Yes, I’ll be all right,’ said the old man. His eyes were watching Hugo all the time, as though he had been hungry to see him and now the hunger was being assuaged. He still held the boy’s hand. ‘It’s sunset, you see,’ he said, ‘when the sun goes down.’
Dr. Thompson was being very cheerful.
‘Come now, you’ll be fine. You’re glad to see the boy?’
‘Yes, very glad,’ and he smiled again, but wanly. It reminded Hugo of a man already far across a field, looking back, the smile dimmed by distance. The old man was not here at all; he had started on a long journey and he could not delay. Hugo had thought that death happened quickly, a sudden snap, not like a voyage started in a great ship, with a thin line of water between the vessel and the quay, the line widening, until a whole world lay between them.
‘Grandfather,’ he said; but the old man was not listening.
After a long silence, he spoke. ‘At sunset I’ll be seeing Daisy,’ he said thoughtfully; ‘she’ll have grown. She was always having her hems let down, always her hems.’ Then he said no more, but lay there patiently waiting.
An hour later his eyes flickered.
‘Poor old chap,’ said Dr. Thompson.
‘Can’t we do anything?’ asked Hugo.
‘I’m afraid not. You see, the time comes for us all. We can postpone that time, but it must come in the long run.’ Then later, when the end was very near, ‘You slip down into the study; I’ll be along soon.’
So Hugo slipped down into the study, with the mildew and the books, and the loops of cobwebs hung across the corner, and the glimpse of the mulberry tree on th
e lawn. It was still ashy with winter. In the grass were the yellow flashes of daffodils, and a flowering currant tapped the window with its tight pink buds, like ripening raspberries. He could do nothing, and he knew that his grandfather was passing. When Dr. Thompson came down the stairs again, he would be dead.
This, thought Hugo, is death.
He got permission to go over to Sandingford for the funeral, and wore a new black tie, which gave him a great sense of personal pride. He had no money for flowers, but, cycling over on the cold spring morning, he gathered some early violets from the ditches, tied them together, and took them with him. His grandfather would understand, he felt sure of that.
In the village everybody was depressed, because they had really loved old Mr. Hancock, and it was a wrench. It wasn’t even going to be a very good funeral, they felt, though everyone from all around would be here to pay their respects.
Dr. Thompson made Hugo walk with him, and just behind them came Mrs. Morse, heavily veiled. It was all unreal. Hugo knew that he would never have any distinct memory of this, for it was blurred, and he did not want to remember it; it was so unlike the little that he had known of his grandfather on that one day when they had met. He wanted to recall him as that blandly sweet old man with the lichen of the years, not as a box with tiny handles, carried into church, carried out again, and committed to the earth.
At the last moment he overcame his shyness, and threw the little bunch of wild violets into the open grave; they made a fearfully hollow thud as they fell.
Afterwards he and Dr. Thompson had tea in the quiet house, the Old Dovorian and the present-day one talking earnestly. Hugo had to explain a little about his father, who had no idea that the boy was here.
‘I think it must have been because my mother died when I was born,’ he said. ‘Apparently it cut him up a lot.’
‘Probably,’ said the doctor; but his tone was unconvincing. He said that he understood that the old man had left everything to Mrs. Morse, who had been very good to him in her way, though the tone in which he said this was cold. He was sorry now that there was nothing for the grandson, his own kith and kin.
Hugo said nothing. He was very glad that he had had the courage to throw that little bunch of violets into the grave and that it had gone with the old man.
He cycled back and knew that he was now very tired; somehow his legs did not seem as if they would go round, but had become heavy and stiff. He saw the sea coming into sight, hazily amethyst, and arriving at the summit of the hill he saw the castle on the left and the town settling down into the valley, blue and grey, with the ships coming and going in the harbour. It was all the same; and yet not quite the same, for he had met death face to face and had looked it in the eyes; in his heart, young and quick with life, he felt awed and unreal. An episode had been finished, a stark reality had precipitated itself into his own being; he was forced now to acknowledge one of the ugly facts of this world.
Hugo left Dover at the end of the summer term of 1932. He had wanted to stay longer, and to go on to a university, because he was a clever boy and would have done well. But times were not what they once had been with the tea office, and money was not so plentiful in consequence. James Blair did not like confessing to this, and insisted that the world was on the downward grade. It was slipping. Also, never having been to a university himself, he did not consider it to be necessary for his son.
Hugo did not argue, he felt that he was lucky to have a month’s holiday before being expected to start work in the city. That was something to be thankful for, anyway. A week of the time he spent in Portsmouth with the Binns family. The lapse of years had irrevocably marred his relationship with them. Mr. Binns, plumper and squarer, an excellent advertisement for the Paymaster who ordered his menus, now addressed Hugo as ‘sir’ instead of ‘son’, which marked the difference between them. Emily forgot to say ‘ducks’, and was nervously halting in her manner, older and thicker too, with Nips now six years old, and little Cecil going three, and another one on the way.
Although Portsmouth was still an absorbing city by the sea, Hugo knew that he himself was older, and had he realised the big difference the years between could make, he would not have come here. He could no longer go round with Mr. Binns in the same pleasant intimacy; they did not visit the little old tobacconist, who had been made a man in an old-time windjammer, they did not go to fun alleys, nor buy haddocks, nor peer into pornographic peep-shows.
However, they did go to Pompey Hippodrome one night, with the same slightly fusty smell, and the same strident band, and the same curtain flowing down to the rather dusty floor. It was an unfortunate programme, presenting Siamese twins, two girls, who interested the men very much, but upset Emily, who said that she was sorry that she had seen them, being like she was, and now maybe she’d have Siamese twins herself, and then what would she do?
Mr. Binns tried to be comforting, but the evening was a mistake and they knew it.
For four days Hugo wandered about Portsmouth; he lay on the beach at Southsea, and listened to the slither of waves receding from the shingle; he walked down the common where all the retired admirals walk, and along the pier where Emily had first met Mr. Binns, and he went into the dockyard. He decided to curtail such a disappointing visit and cycle home. He could do it fairly easily, he was sure.
Before he left he bought a model boat for Nips, and a Dutch barge for Cecil, but the children were not interested in the sea. They were both going to be ‘something better’, something in an office with week-ends off, and a gentleman’s status, Emily said with pride. Tradition was suffering a blight.
When, one evening, Mr. Binns appeared in a plum-coloured plain clothes suit, it gave Hugo a pain, an actual physical pain which hurt a lot, for the god was showing his feet of clay. It had never occurred to Hugo that Mr. Binns could step from that pinnacle of navy serge and blue jean, and sacrifice the full glossy beauty of his ‘silk’ for a collar and tie. Next morning there was a hard red weal where the collar had cut his neck, he was self-conscious about it, but told Hugo that Emily preferred him in plain clothes, so he’d bought the suit to humour her, adding, ‘You know what women are, sir.’ Hugo understood.
He left Portsmouth on a hot August day, cycling out through Cowplain past the Heroes of Waterloo, to Horndean, and on past the dreadful little village of old railway carriages and broad huts, till he came to the spreading beauty of Hampshire beyond the Portsdown hills. He made Petersfield early, and stayed for an ice-cream from a friendly Tom Walls’ man, who exchanged pleasant back-chat. He had an aunt in Hindhead, and said that she would be able to give Hugo a night’s lodging there. Hugo accepted this news gladly.
Now he cycled on, with no attempt to make speed, because he felt assured that the ice-cream man’s aunt would help him. In the early afternoon he passed that spreading chestnut tree at Liphook, with here or there pure amber leaves flaunting amongst the green beauty of the branches. Autumn was already on its way, stepping with gold and russet footfalls amongst the hedgerows and trees. Beyond Liphook, the road was clear, and purple splashes of heather marked it. The rose of the willow herb, so abundant in that district, had blown to thistledown, there were fir trees, with pink hairy trunks, and dark cirrus of boughs above, like upturned brushes in the sky. He came rather tiredly to Hindhead, which was not the sort of place that he had expected, and when he asked a policeman the direction of the farm, had to retrace his steps a mile. The aunt lived in a pleasantly prosperous farm, set back from the road and screened with trees; it was not really Hindhead at all, just as she was not the sort of aunt one would have thought an ice-cream man would have had. Small and round, she was like a currant bun, with hair glossy brown, and eyes small and darting like overbaked currants. At first she said that she did not see how she could put him up, they had only three rooms, one for herself and husband, one in which a lady lodger was sleeping, and the one which her daughter occupied. At this most difficult crisis in the conversation, the daughter herself appeared, a g
irl of nineteen, with deep red hair and a full dark red mouth in her pale face. She was a startling-looking girl, and had added to her attractions by wearing a dress the green colour of weed which comes up to the shore at slack water, and gives the sea a green rim.
She said, ‘He can have the loft, Mother?’
‘I don’t in the least mind where I sleep,’ Hugo explained truthfully.
The woman looked anxious. ‘It isn’t much of a place, and there’s only the hay in there. I don’t see as how it could be made into a room.’
But Hugo had liked the idea. ‘I’m so tired that I’ll sleep anywhere, and the loft’s as good to me as any other place; besides, hay is always warm.’
‘Of course it will do; I’ll show it him,’ said the girl, and she motioned to him to come across the yard.
She led the way into a coach-house which smelt of the earth, for the garden tools were stacked there, heavy with clods. A carpenter’s bench was ranged along one side, and there was a carefully made ladder against the back wall, widely built, with a balustrade so that it was almost like real stairs.
‘It’s up here,’ she said, and went on ahead.
She wore no stockings, and her shoes were made of rope and made to match her frock. It struck Hugo that she must take a great deal of trouble to dress so noticeably. There was a narrow landing with hardly room for two, and a couple of low doors leading from it; the smell of stored apples came from the smaller room, and he knew at once that fruit must be kept there. But the loft that she ushered him into was small and square, whitewashed fairly recently, with a wooden window flung open, so that the air came rushing in. The hay was piled high in one corner, and tossed on to the floor, it was fresh hay too, from this summer’s mowing, and sweet with sorrel and clover and dead daisies. It held a pot pourri of scents, which was indicative of sleep.
‘Of course it will do beautifully,’ said Hugo.
The girl came to a standstill, facing him. ‘Mother’s a bit fussy. She would have turned you away if it hadn’t been for me, but I guessed this would do. When you’re tired the hay makes a lovely bed.’