The Stranger from the Sea

by Paul Binding

  It was not a particularly interesting story we found there, about the bankruptcy of a once-thriving local business (Higginson and Busby), and far from interestingly told.

  Barton scoured our Dep Ed’s piece twice, then remarked: “Though it goes against the grain to criticize an eminent family-friend who’s so sadly in the wars right now, I have to confess I find Uncle Tom just a trifle long-winded in the telling of this tangled tale. Would you not agree, Bridges?” I remembered the wink Barton had given me behind Mr. Betterton’s back on one of my first days in the office. “Some jigging around is most assuredly called for, in my humble view. You see, I did my training not here but on Maidstone’s, our county town’s, main rag—a pretty superior affair to this, I don’t mind telling you—and I learned a thing or two there . . . I take it, my friend, you’re familiar with the term ‘inverted pyramid’?”

  I was not, I hadn’t even heard the term from Will Postgate’s lips?

  “Did you say . . .” I began unconvincingly, as if I hadn’t quite caught what Barton had just said.

  “Oh dear!” said Barton, giving a mock-sigh. “I’d have thought the notion would have trickled through from Fleet Street down to Lewisham-and-Lee by now. It’s the new way of writing things up, Bridges. Let me explain, as I see I must.” I let him do this. “You start with the full story itself, in other words with the broad base of the pyramid, arousing your readers’ interest with a bold but succinct presentation of the affair as a whole. As a whole! Then you consequently work your way downwards—this pyramid is inverted, remember!—so that you end your piece on a fine point, preferably in the form of a question that will resonate inside your readers’ thick skulls for hours, not to say days, afterwards. Let me put it this way! If we were to take Uncle Tom’s injury as our subject—and let us hope and pray we will never have to—we would begin our piece with the broad tragedy of his being indisposed and therefore unable, most regrettably, to come into the office today. And we would end with the dramatic incident itself when—bang! thump! ooh! ouch!—down Church Steps the old newspaperman tumbles.”

  “I thought you just said a piece of this type should end with a question.”

  “Bridges, you are a fast learner,” said Barton, “and I am mightily impressed. Yes, of course, you are quite right. ‘Has the good man been permanently lamed?’ would be the desirable conclusion to our hypothetical story about Uncle Tom. All so much better, don’t you think, so much more modern, so much more nineteenth century, than just going plod-plod-plod through something?”

  “Plod-plod-plod just about sums this piece up!” I agreed sycophantically but sincerely. “Only something like your inverted pyramid could save it from being a right old invitation to yawn.”

  “One has to be careful, though!” said Barton.

  I was the young man of London experience as I answered, “And sometimes one simply has to be bold and decisive.”

  “Put like that, how can I not concur?”

  It was fun, it truly was, greater fun than any I’d had so far in the office, more like what I’d known in South London before all those excursions to the printers had begun to multiply: the two of us tinkering about—well, something more than that, I’m afraid—with Mr. Betterton’s work, and knowing that we both should and should not be behaving as we were. We really enjoyed ourselves being (as we saw it) two clever, resourceful young men together, abreast of the times and unwilling to kowtow to outmoded conventions. From having, only hours earlier, been—literally as well as spiritually—closer to Hans Lyngstrand than ever before, I was now—again literally (and possibly the other thing as well)—closer to Barton than I had yet been—him of the red hair and long, well-exercised limbs, the person the nearest to me in the whole outfit in terms of age, position, even (possibly) personality.

  “You said there were two things Edmund asked you to tell me!”

  “Yes, though to tell you the truth the second is something he had asked me first to do myself—for obvious reasons—but which I simply couldn’t face.”

  This didn’t bode well. “Which is . . .?”

  “To go over to Kingsbarrow, to the Old Hole, St. Stephen’s College. Every First of June it holds a Grand Open Day for parents and local bigwigs and gentry to show them all how wonderful the place is, and the Headmaster, the Reverend Richard Whittington, commonly and obviously known as Dick, escorts people ’round and takes the lion’s share of the credit. Anyway, this Monday—May 11—a bit prematurely you might say—he wants someone from The Advertiser to go over there so this paper can start preparing huge coverage of all the events of the Great Day. As an alumnus of the place—like himself!—Edmund thought of me, naturally enough, but I’ve had quite enough of the Old Hole for one young lifetime . . .”

  “Despite being Victor Ludorum there?”

  “Despite even that. The whole place is given over to establishing the sainthood of Dick Whittington and the mighty eminence of the greatest local bigwig, Sir Greeley Donaldson, who makes great gifts and whose sons attend the school. It’s enough to make you ‘chuck’ as the coarse expression is. That got to be what I wanted to do when the bally name of Donaldson came up, as it did at every touch and turn. So it occurred to me that, as one who should be getting to know the region and all the most important places in it, you, Bridges, would be the ideal man for the job. And Edmund saw my point!”

  “Well, thanks. It certainly would make a day out for me.”

  “Morning out!” corrected Barton. “Edmund’s even found trains for you to catch, so don’t build up the outing too much in your imagination.”

  “It’ll be interesting to see St. Stephen’s,” I said, doubtful this was quite the aptest adjective. But you never know, I might there find out more about George Fuller and his son Horace, and that might well prove interesting.

  That night, just as I was wondering whether he would or not, Hans slipped surreptitiously into my room again. He wanted his entrance, I now realize, to be an inextricable part of the nocturnal quiet (he waited until I had extinguished my bedside lamp), with only the swoosh-swoosh of the Channel beyond the window for accompaniment.

  Eventually he broke the stillness by saying: “Martin, Mary spoke to me today.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “She said she was certain I’d meet the bo’sun again. That he would come back into my life. And she said she knew this not after being in any—what did she call it?—trance, but from her natural sympathy with living people. ‘You will see him again, sure as sure! Whether he’s alive or dead.’”

  “But she told you—he was dead?”

  “She told me he was beyond the gateway, and on the shining path. Perhaps that isn’t the same thing as . . . dead?”

  “I’d rather we talked about other matters,” I said, surprising myself by the intensity with which I spoke, “about Norway, for example. Its fjords, its mountains, how its people live whether on land and on sea.”

  So Hans obliged, and very vivid were the word-pictures he gave me. This second night he did not merely lie down beside me but lifted up the bedclothes and eased himself underneath them. How night changes its complexion when you share it with somebody. I had not until that moment appreciated just what a solitary business, just how lacking in any of the consolations of closeness, my life had been.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mercies of One Sort or Another

  Friday afternoon. “Hullo, hullo!” I called out, once I’d got to the top of the attic-story stairs. No need for any formalities with somebody beside whom you have lain under sheets all the previous night. “Hope you’ve had a good day!”

  As usual the door of the Mercy Room was ajar, with Japheth sitting outside it, his exceptionally long and pointed ears perked for my arrival. On actually seeing me he did as always, quickly padded toward me to rub his head against my right calf while emitting the loud but somehow insectlike purr he’d inherited from his mother. “Hope too you haven’t been plagued by too many thoughts of your bo’sun!” And with this rathe
r breezy remark I entered the bedroom—

  To see there not the young Norwegian whom by now I thought its rightful occupant, but somebody else entirely. Sitting in a chair underneath the kite patterned with the Union Jack was none other than Mrs. Fuller herself, as still as any specimen of Hans Lyngstrand’s beloved sculpture, so still that the strands of its tail, swaying in a gentle breeze from the open window, looked as though they were tickling a marble statue of some Greek goddess.

  God, whatever has happened? Whatever is she doing up here? Beatrice Fuller’s eyes were half-closed, and even when they opened only reluctantly admitted me into focus. I was wondering whether (and how) to address her when this marmoreal figure spoke in a voice of appropriately mineral quality:

  “I’ve seen you, Mr. Bridges, my peace you’ve already disturbed.”

  “Is Hans Lyngstrand all right?” It was impossible to disguise the fear now coursing through me. There was never going to be any guaranteeing that Hans was “all right.” “Why is he not here?”

  “Hans is well enough,” said Mrs. Fuller. “That’s to say, as well as one in his grave state of health could ever be. The Appleton-Whites—who live at Gulliver House at the end of this road—such hospitable, cultivated people—invited him to take tea with them on his own. Both the Appleton-Whites admire Norway greatly, you see, and visit the country frequently. The three of them will have a great deal to talk about.” She somehow implied it was a fault in me, as well as a lack, that I had not been to Norway myself. “You seem surprised, Mr. Bridges, that I am sitting here in the Mercy Room.” She gave an acrid little laugh. “But the room does belong to me, you know, in common with every other room in this house. The whole of Castelaniene, you do realize, is mine.”

  “I never thought otherwise,” I answered, but she didn’t appear to hear my rejoinder, though she was no longer holding herself in a lapidary attitude but had relaxed into the contours of her chair.

  Then, as much to herself as me, she said: “I speak to him too sharply too often.” I could hardly disagree with her judgment. “It is after all little more than a boy I’m dealing with.” I did not take this as a compliment and was surely not meant to. But what she said next, inclining her elegant head forward, was ever-so-slightly mollifying: “You must understand, Mr. Bridges, that I have many things of my own to think about, things which make huge demands on my feelings and even challenge my principles.” This statement promised to be interesting. “Things connected with this very room.” And a sweep of her hand indicated the rugby ball, the soccer ball, the fives racket, and the stuffed eagle, all of which had never ceased to attract my puzzled gaze. “It is hard to do justice to all the associations this Mercy Room has for me, independently, I might add, of the various guests I have been kind enough to invite to stay in it.”

  It’s now or never, I said to myself; nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Are they associations with . . . with your son?” I asked.

  The effect of these words—well, of that last word—was electric, Beatrice Fuller was indeed like someone administered a shock current. She jumped out of her chair, knocking her head against the kite as she did so and making its red-white-and-blue tail strands flutter furiously. I thought for a few dreadful seconds she was going to take me by outstretched hands and savagely claw me, an avenging harpy. But in fact she lowered her arms onto her sides with a loud sigh, stopped in her tracks beneath the suspended Spanish galleons, and said: “How—however—do you know about him?”

  Had she really expected, I have often asked myself since, the whole of Dengate, of which community I was now, you could say, a working member, to be silent on this subject? That pointed to a decided vein of unreality in her. As she herself perhaps dimly saw, for, nervously rubbing the palms of her hands against her skirt, she said: “I suppose Edmund told you. Even though he promised me faithfully never to speak of . . . him to my lodger. It was a little condition I made when I agreed to consider your boarding in this house.”

  “It was not Edmund who told me,” I was quick to defend my boss. “It was somebody quite different.”

  She didn’t inquire who that person was, and I didn’t want to sneak on Barton. “Well, I suppose somebody was going to tell you sooner or later,” she conceded begrudgingly.

  Exactly! So why all the elaborate secrecy, why even this present drama?

  “This was his room?” I might as well get everything clear now, even though I knew the answer.

  “Yes, this was his room.” Spoken gravely and in a low tone.

  “And all this—” It was hard to find the right collective noun for what was so lavishly all about us, and the collective noun I nearly used ‘stuff’ would obviously never have done, would have only insulted the boy’s mother further. “All these,” I tactfully changed from singular to plural, “were Horace’s?”

  Mrs. Fuller’s eyes blazed like splinters of ice caught by fiery sun. “So, you even know my son’s name, Mr. Bridges. Quite a snooper, you’ve turned out to be, quite a little Mr. Peter Pry. I suppose you fancy your personal brand of ill-bred inquisitiveness to be some sign of your being a master journalist?” She snorted contemptuously at the very notion of such delusion on my part.

  “Mrs. Fuller,” I said, deciding to marshal what dignity I had, not greatly helped by Japheth intensifying the vigor with which he rubbed his head against my leg. “I called him Horace because that was what he was called by the individual who told me about him. I was asking no questions at that time about either you or your family, I’m not in the least a Mr. Peter Pry.” I amazed myself by using the absurd term back to her.

  A long pause, then—“You must excuse me. It is not a happy subject.” Mrs. Fuller sighed, “Even after all this time it brings me pain. Have I been right, have I been wrong? I ask myself those questions over and over again. But,” reverting to her more usual manner, “someone such as yourself who has never known responsibility can scarcely be expected to understand all my various dilemmas.”

  I could not have this. Annoyance rose from within me and demanded words.

  “I assure you,” I replied, with what I hoped didn’t sound too much like wounded dignity. “I have known very considerable responsibilities, and I’m sorry that’s not apparent. You yourself have said—very perceptively, I thought—that I had experienced more of life’s sorrows than many my age. My father and mother died in distressing circumstances, and I was the one who had to”—well, why not come out with some of the sordid truth?—“answer to creditors and defend their reputations. And almost as soon as they were both . . . gone, I started earning my own living and in fact made good some of what my parents—well, my father—owed. And I was only seventeen and had been brought up to think of myself as having quite different prospects. And I should add that no employer has found fault with me yet. Quite the opposite, and nobody should know that better than yourself. Edmund Hough hired me thanks to excellent recommendations from my former employer, and then judged me fit to live in your house.”

  Mrs. Fuller made no acknowledgement, direct or indirect, of this little speech but I could tell straightaway that my words—however impertinent-seeming—were not entirely wasted and would continue to resonate inside her.

  “He wasn’t contented here,” she said, again not so much to me as to herself, or, maybe even more, to some other invisible half-accusatory presence. “In fact, he was in the end discontented nearly all the time. Many a boy would have given his eye-teeth to have only a fraction of what you can find in this room, but not Horace. He cared for none of it.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that!”

  Mrs. Fuller looked at me now with softer eyes. “Yes, I do believe you are, Mr. Bridges. And I can imagine that for all your clumsy attempts to swagger, you were simple and ingenuous enough when younger to enjoy a model galleon or two, or even this Patriots’ Kite. Whereas Horace . . . Well, it’s too late for regrets now, far too late.”

  Did this last sentence mean that Horace Fuller was another person who had disappea
red—“disappeared,” that is, in the Gateway’s sense? Surely not! Barton had spoken of Horace Fuller as one alive and flourishing somewhere, if far away. And Mrs. Fuller’s own manner, though strained and sorrowful, didn’t suggest bereavement, though that shouldn’t be used as too much of an index, for I did not find her widow-like either.

  This exchange—which was to alter our mutual perceptions of each other—could proceed no further because at that moment we both heard the unmistakable heavy wheezy breathing of Hans Lyngstrand, as slowly he mounted the precipitous stairs. What a far cry his movements were from those brought to mind by all the accoutrements in this room, agility on the footer field, accuracy of aim in the cricket nets, hardy scaling of rigging on the high seas. But no sooner had I thought this than I reflected that this last action Hans had literally carried out hundreds of times, with never a slip, and that it was after more dangerous adventures than even the ideal occupant of this Room would usually have to face that he had come here to receive its Mercy.

  The Appleton-Whites of Gulliver House had been kind enough to lend Hans a book, The Art of Bertel Thorvaldsen, containing photogravure plates of his work. After supper he took the volume upstairs to his bedroom, and when I looked into the Mercy Room later, I found him engrossed in it, seated below the swaying pendant model galleons.