‘Must you say that again? Am I to be allowed to drink or not?’
Tipton ordered some retzina for her and turned to Dr Challoner.
‘Then anybody can go to Keritha now? They won’t be thrown out?’
‘Not if they’re fools enough to go. But you needn’t pass that on to Spaulding.’
‘I won’t,’ promised Tipton. ‘But there’s somebody else who’d like to go. Garland Becker. Know him?’
‘Slightly. Quite sound in his own field, I believe. Why on earth should he want to go?’
‘I think he wouldn’t mind taking the wind out of Spaulding’s sails. He was foaming at the mouth over Spaulding’s last book.’
‘Oh that. I haven’t read it. Don’t intend to. I can’t think why your people publish him.’
‘He … er … sells quite well.’
‘He would!’
‘Anyway Becker is of your opinion. He says Spaulding’s two and two always come out as seven. If there’s anything worth investigation on Keritha he wants to dispose of it before Spaulding gets to work. I think I’ll drop him a hint that there’d be no difficulties now about his going. You wouldn’t object, would you? He can be trusted to take sensible people along.’
‘Eric! The steamer is hooting!’
‘I heard.’
‘Tell him from me,’ said Dr Challoner, ‘that he’ll waste his time. Keritha is a hopelessly dull little place. As soon as my business is finished I’m off and I shan’t come back.’
‘We shall be left behind.’
‘Leaving that house empty? What a waste! Becker is going with a party to the Dodecanese this summer. He could slip over to Keritha …’
‘Well, get left behind if you like. I’m starting.’
Mrs Tipton jumped up, bared her teeth in a farewell grimace, and bustled off towards a boat which was taking passengers off for the steamer.
‘Your house!’ said Tipton. ‘From what you say, very comfortable. Left empty! Why not let it to Becker? He …’
Another long hoot from the steamer drowned Tipton’s voice. His wife, in the boat, was waving and shouting.
‘Oh God! I must go, I suppose. Think about it. Drop me a line if you like the idea. I shall be in Athens till the end of next week. The Acropolis Hotel …’
He set off for the jetty at a lumbering run and jumped into the boat just as it was putting off. This last-minute gallop and the shrieks of Mrs Tipton greatly diverted Zagros.
The steamer sailed away. Dr Challoner watched it go and turned over Tipton’s proposition in his mind. That the house might be let was a perfectly new idea. He had thought of it as completely valueless, since no person in his senses could want to stay on Keritha and he did not care to deal with imbeciles. Tipton’s offer to arrange everything had been a trifle officious, as though two such Mandarins as Challoner and Becker could not communicate with one another directly, should they wish to do so. It might, however, be more diplomatic, on this occasion, to act through a third party. Any direct approach might look like an admission that Keritha was worth a visit. It was not, and Becker could be trusted to discover, and to proclaim, that it was not.
There was, on the other hand, that gravestone. It must be removed and replaced by something more seemly if any civilized visitors were likely to set eyes on it. The cost and the trouble must be set against the advantages to be gained by letting the house. Dr Challoner hated trouble, and had pretty well decided that, so long as nobody ever came at all, the thing could be left as it was. Alfred’s silly letter had inclined him to feel that much distress over it was needless.
Moreover there was Eugenia. Her presence in the house would create difficulties and might entail awkward explanations.
Best let it go, he thought sadly, as he worked out a proper tip for the girl at the taverna. I can’t turn her out. Must do what he asked me. He’s been very just about the jewellery and the money, and only asked for one thing in return: that I’d let her stay on. Pity! Becker! He’d make short work of that stupid island. Dryads! Naiads! Give Becker a week and there’d be precious little left of them on Keritha or anywhere else.
3
Selwyn would have liked to go to Zagros but was not invited by the other two, who were endeavouring, by sundry snubs, to make him understand that he had outstayed his welcome.
He understood that perfectly but meant to remain until told outright to go away. The situation on Keritha amused him, especially now that old Challoner had obviously tumbled to the truth about Eugenia. He wanted to see what would happen next.
Having watched the boat start for Zagros he got the maids to cut him some sandwiches and set off to explore the island. The highest point of it was barred by rocks only to be scaled by the agile. Turning aside, he crossed a shoulder of the mountain to a point where he had a fine view of the sea to the south. Here he sat down, ate his sandwiches, and chuckled over the memory of Dr Challoner last night, bolting upstairs to bed with Eugenia in pursuit. After a while, having exhausted this diversion, he began to count. A lizard, sunning itself on a stone by his foot, caught his attention when he had got as far as 753. Its palpitations fascinated him. They were so regular that he did not need to count. Presently he fell asleep.
The lizard was still there when he awoke, although he felt as if he had been submerged in nothingness for hundreds of years. Strangely relaxed, at peace, he floated out of some dark tunnel into the breath of bright air on Keritha, the glitter of sea and sky. There was his little friend, gently vibrating on the hot stone. He could watch it and not think; he could almost be the lizard, placidly vibrating with it, feeling the spring warmth in all his limbs.
Suddenly he sneezed. The lizard shot into a crevice of the stone; it was amazing that so sleepy a creature could move so quickly. He bent down and murmured:
‘Sorry, old man! Couldn’t help it.’
Later he made his way over the shoulder until the western side came into view, the scattered homesteads, the fruit blossom, the jetty, the boats, and a man ploughing yellow earth under the olive trees. As a landscape it was familiar enough; he had met with it before in many parts of Greece. But this one struck him as completely satisfying, as though he had been famished and was making a meal as he looked at it. How long he gazed he scarcely knew; some time later he pursued the track which led him eventually to the bridge in the shady ravine. The faint tinkle of water could be heard before he got there. Sugar! He had none, but he had not eaten all the little sweet cakes which the maids had packed with the sandwiches. He threw one over, as he crossed the bridge, and paused to listen in case She said thank you.
Then he turned to look at the laughter of the sea below. He was waiting for something. A few moments later it happened. Cosmos turned a somersault. The scene steadied and took on an extreme actuality, as though loudly asserting itself.
This had happened to him before, on his first visit to the islands. He had once watched the sun rise over Delos, supposing the sun to exist because he saw it, and had suddenly become aware that he existed because the sun saw him, that he was perceived by some such mind as the sun might have, in no sense anthropomorphic, but charged with intelligent cognition.
The dizzy shock of this escape from solitary confinement, from the cramped cell of cogito ergo sum to the wide latitude of cogitat ergo … lasted but for a couple of seconds. He was back in his cell before he could grasp its import, nor could he, upon reflection, call it an intellectual experience. Yet it produced a vital sharpening of all his faculties – intellectual, sensory, and imaginative – which lasted for several months. Mentally he defined it as ‘that time at Delos when I got out’.
Now, as before, he was out and in again between one breath and another. The trees, the sun, the sea, and the stream had all taken a look at him, made him a target of life, before his prison walls closed again, leaving him with keener eyes and ears to make what he could of them.
The song of the water continued without end but not, as he thought after listening for some minutes, without
form. There was perhaps a cadence, a succession of notes, which might be scored for some instrument never yet devised by man. This waterfall might have its own voice. If he listened often enough, got to know it well enough, he might be able to recognize it. Hearing a variety of records, taken from a number of little streams and cascades, he might be able to pick out one and to say positively: That’s Keritha! Each would be different. The length of a drop could in no two cases be quite the same. Some particular stone, or obstacle, must cause a unique cadenza, bound to recur. He lingered and listened to Keritha until he felt that he had got it by heart.
On his return to the house he sat down at Freddie’s desk, with a pencil and paper, trying to score it. He managed about a dozen bars which were, he was sure, constantly repeated. The intervals were wrong; no musical scoring known to him could convey them. The rhythm was right.
There was, besides, another rhythm going on in his mind which had nothing to do with the waterfall. A slow contented pulse was beating. That also was Keritha. He remembered the lizard on the stone – its quiescence, its immense vitality. Smiling slightly he took his pencil again and sketched it, sprawling across the sunny rock amidst a pattern thrown by thistle shadows.
So now what? he wondered when he had finished.
So now what?
He was sunk. He had forgotten to keep on keeping on, and now had no defence at all against the return of thought. For one hour, two hours, he had been living heedlessly, at peace in a world without her. He tore the drawing in half and stumbled away.
The truth could only be endured if he never, never, lost sight of it. He must live with it hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, through each heavy day, never forgetting why he had to count, why he had to behave like a man to whom nothing much can happen. To come back to his loss, to scan it afresh, after some brief treacherous reprieve, was more than he could bear. Keep on keeping on! Count!
Kate, on her return from Zagros, found the torn drawing on Freddie’s desk. During the trip home Challoner had passed on Tipton’s story. They both felt a little remorseful at the cold shoulder which they had given to Selwyn, now that his wretchedness, and the cause of it, had been revealed. She went out at once and found him sitting on his usual bench in the garden. Her face told him that she knew. He said quickly:
‘Don’t! Don’t talk about it.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised, sitting down beside him. ‘I came to give you those cigarettes you asked me to get.’
‘Oh, thanks!’
She handed them over, glad to do him some small service although, that morning, she had thought it rather cool of him to expect it of her.
‘Did you,’ he asked, ‘make whoopee on Zagros, you and Challoner?’
‘He did. I shopped. But he met a kindred spirit. A man called Tipton.’
‘Oh, him? He was in Richardson. So that’s …’
He did not finish. The meaning was plain: that was how his story had come to light.
‘If it wasn’t for the children …’ he said suddenly.
‘Children?’
‘Didn’t Tipton mention that? We had two boys.’
He thought this over and added:
‘I have two boys.’
‘No. I didn’t know that. How old are they?’
‘Paul is five. John is three. I mean they were … Paul is seven now and John is five.’
‘Paul and John?’
‘They were called after … two churches.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘In a sort of home.’
He opened the packet of cigarettes, lit one, and continued:
‘I had to go to Sweden. I left them with a person who didn’t look after them properly. The neighbours complained to the NSPCC and they were put into this home because they needed care and protection. I knew nothing about it till I got back to England. Everybody was very kind when I explained. They said they’d keep the boys for a bit and I said I’d pay for them. It’s near Guildford, where they are.’
‘And are they happy?’
He looked at her as if asking what that word meant.
‘They look after them all right. I live in, at the school where I teach. In Suffolk.’
‘But you see them pretty often?’
‘Sometimes. It doesn’t do, really. They cry, when they see me. I don’t think John remembers. He was only three when … when … but he cries when Paul cries.’
He took out a wallet, adding in an explanatory tone:
‘It’s very sad … Matron sent me this the other day.’
He handed her a photograph. Kate thought that Matron might have managed better. A dozen children were posed on some uncompromising steps. They were well clothed. They looked well nourished. Some were smiling. Yet, despite the toys they all clutched, they faced the camera bleakly. There was an elderly wariness about them which reminded her of the little Challoners next door. Perhaps it was not Matron’s fault. Poor Matron! What could she do for children who knew too much, too soon. Lost in the shadows – motherless. That mother must have been fair-haired. There was no look of Selwyn about either child.
‘This one’s Paul,’ he said. ‘And that’s John.’
It was not very easy to imagine the mother. Dr Challoner had not repeated Tipton’s description of her. Kate pictured some dim, plain creature, glad to get a husband, who had been able to love Selwyn because her love had never been sought elsewhere.
‘But must they be in this home?’ she asked. ‘Have you no relations who would take them?’
‘I haven’t. They’ve a grandmother. Mrs Blaney. She went to America ages ago and never came back. I’ve never seen her. She’s quite cracked. Founded some new religion and given it all her money.’
‘But had you no friends? Where did you live?’
‘We had a flat in Stockholm. For the first years we were there pretty well all the time. I worked for Hagstrom. You know? The glass people. Later on we were in France and Italy a good deal. Hagstrom has premises in Paris and Florence. They’re showrooms really. He sells a lot to Americans. But they had a work-room for me, and I could meet customers personally. People who wanted to order special things. Do you know Hagstrom glass?’
‘I’ve heard of it, of course. And I saw a lovely thing in an exhibition that was theirs, I think. It was called the Marigny bowl, I don’t know why. All the work was inside, upside down, as if the top edge was the rim of a lake and these were reflections, and the bottom was a cloudy sky. Yes, and I saw a picture of another: fountains playing and spray blowing and people faintly suggested in the spray – hardly more than shadows.’
‘The Nereids. That was one of mine. So was the Marigny. It was called that because it was commissioned by the Marigny Institute. It was one of the last things I did, though I’d had it in mind for years. I didn’t dare tackle it before.’
‘Selwyn! One of yours? What do you mean? You did that engraving?’
‘Yes. I told you. I worked for them.’
She had supposed him to have been some kind of salesman and even so she had wondered that Hagstrom should trust him within a mile of their wares.
‘But … but how did you do it?’ she stammered.
‘Diamond point. They both are.’
‘You did those lovely things with your own hands?’
‘I couldn’t have done them with anybody else’s hands, could I?’
In stupefaction she stared at his ungainly hands.
‘I thought … it’s very stupid of me … I thought somebody drew it out and then somebody else, specially skilled, put it into the glass.’
‘They do that sometimes with copperwheel. While I was learning, another man adapted some designs I’d made. But diamond point … you might as well draw a picture and give it to somebody else and say: Now! Draw that picture for me.’
‘But what a dolt I am! Not to have noticed your name. It must have been on the label in that exhibition, but I never took it in. I just thought: Hagstrom.’
‘A lot
of people do. A lot of people don’t know the difference between blowing and engraving.’
The Tipton-Challoner rumour of some mysterious remarkable success was now explained. She was astonished, but less so than she would have expected. She had always thought of Selwyn as possessing capacity and liable to do something or other very well indeed. The wonder was that he should have done it with his hands. Then the end of the story recurred to her: cracked up … lost his job … went to pieces … teaching somewhere.
‘Selwyn! You’ve not given it up?’
‘It’s given me up.’
A finality in his tone warned her against protest or argument. She remembered the torn drawing on Freddie’s desk and came very near to guessing the reason. It had not given him up, but he could only acknowledge It by some surrender which he refused to make. Sighing, she studied the wan faces of Paul and John once more.
‘I still don’t see … why Guildford?’
‘Well, some nuns in Florence looked after them at first.’
‘Oh? It was in Italy … that … that …’
‘In the Apennines. In a little village beyond Vallombrosa. We thought it was indigestion. Till too late. Appendicitis. When we got her down to Florence it was too … They were very kind, those nuns. But Mrs Blaney cabled from America that I’d better take the boys to a friend of hers in London; she’d arranged it. So I brought them to England. But the friend was furious; she said she’d never been very intimate with Mrs Blaney, and oughtn’t to be asked to cope with it. She knew of a person, though, who could take the boys while I went to Stockholm. Some woman who had worked for her.’
‘Who didn’t take proper care of them? How monstrous!’
‘I expect it was a bit of a shock our turning up like that. She’d only just got the letter from Mrs Blaney to say we were coming; hadn’t had a chance to protest. And we arrived late at night, in the middle of a big party she was giving. It was more than she need have done to find anybody at all.’
‘Still … in her shoes I’d have …’
Kate drew her breath sharply, picturing this forlorn trio upon her own doorstep. She would have taken them in until satisfactory arrangements could be made.
The Forgotten Smile Page 15