by Paul Binding
Then the great shock. “I think Hans and I must bid you good night now, Martin. We need to retire a little earlier than usual, as we have much to do in the morning.”
I must have positively gasped out my next sentence: “But isn’t Hans coming back to Castelaniene?”
Herr Strømme was rising from the table. “Oh, no, we would not presume on Mrs. Fuller’s wonderful hospitality any longer. Guardian and ward are reunited now, praises be. We shall of course be visiting Castelaniene tomorrow morning. At eleven o’clock.”
“But I shall not be there,” I protested, hearing an unwanted squeak of indignation in my voice. “I shall be at work. I shall be busy all morning at The Advertiser. Perhaps of course you could both look in . . .”
Hans’s guardian’s smile was all benevolence. “Regrettably we will not have the time for that. Our train for London departs at half past twelve. I fear then, since you will not be at your place of residence tomorrow morning, we shall have to do our leave-takings here. May I thank you for all the friendliness you have shown Hans, and may I hope to see you in Norway some time where you will surely be welcome.”
And he shook my hand, and then—what else?—I shook the hand of Hans. We did not—I am pretty certain of this—look one another in the face.
“Goodbye, Hans!”
“Goodbye, Martin. Thank you. Thank you very much!”
“I hadn’t expected, you see . . .” I began.
“I shall write to you,” Hans said, “if I may!”
If he may!
I walked westwards along the Esplanade hardly able to see the Royal Gardens and the poles and paraphernalia of the emerging Bandstand for tears.
Even remembering the nights after my parents’ deaths, I do not think I have spent hours more desolate than that in which May 19 turned into May 20. Whether I slept at all is immaterial so great was the feeling of loss that prevailed hour after dark hour.
It was indeed as if I had once crossed a threshold between death and life for Hans’s sake, and then made a calculated retreat from it. Had taken myself off the great shining pathway for a room behind a closed door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Summer’s Long Strong Spell
May had been warm, with spectacular blooms—the Clematis Montana in the garden of Castelaniene was a vast pink galaxy in its sky of green leaves—but June brought warmer weather still, and as June moved toward July each day seemed—often in contradiction of actual barometer readings—hotter than its predecessor. At The Advertiser we opened the sash windows on opposite walls so that a current of air, even if slighter than what we wished for, passed through the room, tempering the sweaty heat of our bodies. All of us, even pompous old Betters who repeatedly described himself as a “stickler for etiquette,” worked with jackets off and shirt-sleeves rolled up. Back in Bengal he’d had to adapt to a far more inclement climate! Visits to the printers now seemed like sorties to the mouth of an inferno, from which the poor compositors would emerge, moisture dripping down from their foreheads and huge damp patches at the armpits. Nor could you turn your eyes out toward the Channel for refreshment without almost immediately averting them so strong and smarting was the glare of sun on sea; the sky was so cloudless that the baked blue of its inverted bowl mocked you with its apparent unbreakability. At times we would have given anything for a sight of just such small fluffy nimbuses as had drifted overhead that Saturday afternoon when I sat out in the garden of Castelaniene interviewing Hans Lyngstrand. A long time ago that seemed—I was still the new member of a leading local newspaper’s staff, with a lot to do and a lot to learn, and uncertain security or status. I felt the need for both!
Trains regularly brought down day-trippers from London to revel in the sun on Dengate Sands, and just such bunches of spirited lads with loud laughs, ostentatious appetites, and lubricious winks as Will and his mates in other summers. Once I couldn’t help myself from remarking as the sounds of one of these floated up from the street below: “That was me and my pals this time last year!” Couldn’t help, too, the sadness in my voice, for truly the coolness I felt from all the people around me, except Barton, the only kind of coolness there was these days, was—especially when added to the cool formality of my adieu to Hans—making me very despondent. Within a few minutes these young men sauntering along the street would be swaggering onto the beach; they would make for spots close to gaudy umbrellas with the prettiest girls beneath them, and then show off to them, with a ball-game or with the pantomime that follows casting off shoes and dipping bare feet into the still surprisingly chilly seawater.
At first, I wondered whether I’d spoken my words aloud so long was the silence that followed them.
Then, “Is our cockney sparrow getting a little homesick for his nest?” said Barton Cunningham, and though it was meant as a jest, denoting acceptance of rather than anything else, it jarred on me rather. I suppose, truth to tell, all of us were feeling out of sorts, with the sun so strong on us (no curtains, no blinds) and our perspiration so continuous and pungent.
Thomas Betterton was pleased to reply: “They come and then they go, my good Barton, they never stay and settle, as you surely by now have noticed.” Ostensibly the trite observation could apply to trippers in the streets beneath us rather than sparrows; even so I felt sure I was the main butt of his wit. True, he had, quite sportingly, never made any allusion (at least in my hearing) to the Case of the Inverted Pyramid, and had indeed, on the First of June Founder’s Day, even publicly acknowledged me among all the smartly dressed guests at St. Stephen’s but at the same time no word or look from him had ever suggested that he accepted me as a permanent addition to the team.
At night when I found it hard to fall asleep in the intense stuffiness of my attic-room which even an opened window could not relieve, I’d go over little scenes, such less than welcome remarks as above, so trivial when set down on paper, so near-momentous when experienced or relived. Strange that it was these that occupied my mind rather than the more extraordinary episodes of Hans’s embraces, so unprecedented in my life. (But these did return to me in the form of strong surges of desire in the very early morning when the mind is so dependent on the condition and concurrent demands of the body.) I would frequently re-enact happenings at the office according to the French notion of esprit d’escalier, when, too late, you come up with the truly witty retort that eluded you at the time. I convinced myself there were few young men anywhere in the United Kingdom less popular in the workplace than myself, and naturally the more convinced I became, then the harder it was to act in any way to change that regrettable situation. Would it be such a very stupid thing, I asked myself, to do as I’d half-suggested to my colleagues, follow a homeward-bound band of young visitors back to London, and stay there?
Stay there, yes, but where, and doing what? Could I turn up to my old newspaper and say to its editor (a genial enough man who, when letting me go, had demonstrated a certain paternal regard for me): “Sir, now I’ve seen what it’s like down in the provinces, I realize that I’m far happier working back here, nearer the pulse of things under the direction of your good self and of senior members of your team. And I won’t even mind trotting along to the bloody printers like before. I have matured, I see now that in all jobs you’ve got always to take the rough with the smooth.”
But one of those “seniors” with whom I would have to curry favor, was now none other than Will Postgate, one of the newspaper’s two Deputy Editors. I doubted he would be particularly pleased to see me back. He could no longer be the brightest star in my firmament nor I to him the flattering hero-worshipping younger brother. His second visit to Dengate—busy though he undoubtedly was with his sketches of the Bandstand as it neared completion—had, if anything, undermined our friendship more than the first. He had given me almost insultingly little of his time, and Mrs. Fuller’s pathetic anxiety to cater to all his whims and to listen to him talk as if he were a true metropolitan celebrity was even more trying than before. But she was co
nscientiously polite to myself, and inclusive of me in all her conversation whenever Will and I were there together, so I was given no grounds for complaint. But my friend had not brought his new banjo down with him, so there was no restorative song to bathe wounds and improve the state of the soul.
Indeed, just as the temperature on the barometer never went satisfactorily down, so my spirits never satisfactorily rose, and on the last evening of June, a Tuesday, after my day’s work was over, I did indeed take myself to Dengate Station (though significantly I had no bag with me). It was, I now see, something of a dare to myself, such as I used to make as a schoolboy wanting to run away and join an actor’s troupe or when I was bored at the stationer’s (which was not seldom). Prove yourself a free man by boarding the next London train, an inner voice tauntingly directed.
And I had a more-than-usually-strong good reason for doing so. An incident that morning had greatly upset me.
Normally—and it is as true of now as of then—I can be relied on to have the right books, stationery, documents, etcetera for any given occasion. I say, when praised for this, that it is part of the (perhaps unexpected) tidiness of my mind. But this particular Tuesday (the day we went to press), I had just reached the western gates of the Royal Gardens when I realized I had left behind a newly drawn-up list of localities—background for an article compiled by three of us, Archie, Barton and myself, about plant-nurseries—behind in my bedroom. So back to Castelaniene I went.
I turned the key in the lock of the front door with the dexterity of impatience, and ran breathlessly up the two flights of stairs, onto the landing and into my room, the door of which was open, and in which stood—Mary.
She had a duster in her hand and resting on the surface nearest her a dustpan-and-brush, so she presumably was up here to clean. But the surface in question was the top of my desk, on which also reposed a pile of papers topped by that list of nursery-gardens which I’d come to retrieve. From the startled way in which she drew back I knew she’d been peeking at it. And why not, you might say, isn’t that what every housemaid would do, to alleviate the boredom of her common round. Anyway, a fat lot of good it would do her, learning what places between Dengate and Deal are best for buying interesting breeds of roses. But I still didn’t like her nosing ’round my things, any more indeed than I liked her.
“I’ll thank you to let me get to my own papers on my own desk,” I said sharply, though my heavy breathings made my remark sound less cutting than I’d intended. And all but pushed her aside.
Brushing against her as I did this was not, disconcertingly, an unpleasant experience. My body had registered, even if for split seconds, the edge of her left breast and had instinctually responded to it. She had anyway these last weeks been looking a good deal better; whatever ailment had been inflicting her had virtually cleared up. Her nose was no longer sore, her eyes no longer plagued with sties, and somehow or other, and somewhere or other, for I always tried not to look at the specifics of her person, she had lost quite a few pounds. Beneath the dark-hued cotton frock her shape was far from displeasing. Almost crossly I snatched up the required sheets of paper with an aggressive gesture that could have been intended as a rebuke to herself.
“On the whole,” I said with a sarcastic little smile, “it is best not to peer at other people’s papers that are no concern of yours whatsoever.”
Mary’s answer to me was immediate and deadly: “On the whole,” she said, “it is best not to leave your linen in a disgusting state after two persons have been sharing a bed.”
I was so caught out, and so horrified that she had said at last what I had most dreaded her saying, I all but dropped what was in my hand, the object of my return walk, onto the floor. After two persons . . . Nobody had ever made such an appalling remark to me, but then of course I had never made myself vulnerable to anyone’s doing so. From the triumphant glimpse in her small (if now sty-free) eyes I knew her to be referring, quite unambivalently to—issue.
Fear of the most unadulterated and unmanning variety assailed me. Though she had not said so, she was perfectly aware who the two persons had been; indeed how could she not have been?
Incomprehension and dudgeon were my only possible resort.
“I would keep a clean tongue in your head, Mary!” I said. All the way to the newspaper I pondered whether indeed there could be such stains on bedclothes as to proclaim a dual rather than a single presence?
One thing was certain, however. I had, by my reactions, confirmed Mary’s nasty suspicions. (Why “nasty” where something so joyful was concerned?) What a curious creature she was—object of Mr. Fuller’s solicitous tenderness, receiver of charming little presents from the younger Horace Fuller, Mrs. Fuller’s treasured vehicle and Colonel Walton’s too as conveyer of messages from the next world able to take in the missing crew of a Norwegian ship and the inhabitants of suburban Kentish villas alike! Furthermore, I noticed, she had delivered her last horrible sentence to me in a very different accent from that she often employed—and had used for her communications to the Gateway. Hearing her almost copy-book articulation now made it no longer surprising that she had read a novel by one of the Brontë sisters nor that she had added to her many practical skills various other more intellectual accomplishments (with the hopes perhaps of becoming that most modern thing, a Perfect Private Secretary). She was somebody it was advisable for me to treat with caution. What might she not say to or about me, especially after my un-wisdom of this morning? Maybe I would be doing myself an immense personal favor by parting company with Dengate, its tight, smug community—this very evening.
Nobody here would miss me. Perhaps of course it could truthfully be said I had done nothing to engender that emotion. I was not right for this Channel Port, and it was not right for me.
It was not clear from the one letter I had received from Norway that Hans Lyngstrand missed me either. That he didn’t suffer for me the dull ache of felt absence that daily I entertained for him. His letter had been disappointingly short and matter-of-fact though he did say he had all but forgotten how beautiful his own country was and how glad he was once more to be reunited with the granite mountains, the long fjords cutting into them, the rocky islets off the coast, though he still hoped to travel south to see where the masters of sculpture had lived and worked. Not a word about Dengate, not a word about myself either, except to say he hoped I was well. Why, Barton Cunningham would have hoped as much, and he’d have done so in a brighter, well more “cheerful” letter!
Before the temple-like portals of Dengate Station I stood dithering internally. As I’d found toward the end of fervid boyish daydreams, running away is far easier thought than done. Where, for example, would I sleep tonight? I could turn up at my old lodgings, I could throw myself on old Will’s mercies, but . . . Then think of the trouble I would be causing Edmund who had taken me under his wing so enthusiastically and whose decision to do so I still properly had to vindicate. To give myself time I entered the branch of W. H. Smith’s adjacent to the station. Here I bought myself the most recent copy of Tit-Bits, and at once there came back to me all the brilliant journalistic ideas I had had before I came down to this . . . stupid old Channel Port. But had they altogether left me? Had my Dengate experiences from de facto social ostracism to sexual unorthodoxy really banished them from my mind so thoroughly that I could not reanimate them—and to the advantage of my present life?
Leaving the shop, I saw a poster on the advertisement hoarding opposite the entrance to the station. In bold letters imitating some street-fair handbill of the previous century (a pastiche our printers, Barrett Brothers excelled in) all could read:
SATURDAY JULY THE FOURTH EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FIVE
THREE O’CLOCK
IN THE ROYAL GARDENS, DENGATE
GRAND CEREMONIAL OPENING OF THE NEW BANDSTAND
BY SIR GREELEY DONALDSON OF HARLAND COURT
AND
MR. GEORGE BARLEY, HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR OF DENGATE
Beneat
h this lay the particulars of the concert with which the Bandstand would be inaugurated, to be played by the Invicta Orchestra. I had them by heart already as I did the words above them; I’d sub-edited them enough times:
J. Strauss: The Blue Danube (waltz)
A. Sullivan: H.M.S. Pinafore (medley)
J. Sousa: Congress Hall (march)
E. Grieg: Symphonic Dance No 2
A ten-page program—published under the auspices of the paper and printed by (again, of course!) Barrett Brothers, and available only on the day itself—would explain more about these items and about the players that would render them. But, standing there gawping at the proclamation and with approximately one half of me spiritually already being chugged toward London, I appreciated I knew a good deal already. That the conductor, James Millbank, was uncle to the boy Peter Frobisher in our office. That the oboe solo, important for the Grieg dance, would be played by Herbert Danwell, a young dentist who lived next door but one to Castelaniene. The name for the whole proud, but inevitably, somewhat scratch orchestra had its origins in county history—“Invicta” was the unconquerable horse who’d carried into victory King Vortigern, the great Kentish king.
Why then, with all this knowledge of the components of the scene, did I not remain in Dengate till at least the Bandstand’s inauguration? Further intimate details of the occasion occurred to me. His Worship the Mayor was a distant cousin of Mr. Betterton himself, while Sir Greeley Donaldson, of whose munificence to St. Stephen’s his son had made me fully aware on my visit to the establishment, was a man whose hand I had actually shaken at the school’s Founder’s Day; Donaldson Ma had introduced us, the boy clearly thinking (though obviously not saying) that my “chucking” had formed an indissoluble bond between us. Sir Greeley, I was now aware (as who in Dengate was not?), had made an extremely handsome donation to the erection of the Bandstand, and furthermore had persuaded an American bank with which he was connected to do the same: this indeed accounted for the precise date of the opening (America’s national day) and the inclusion in the program of a march by an American composer making quite a name for himself in his own country.