The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, and added, ‘I’m here on a modern journey. I intend to be an observer.’

  ‘Of what?’ he queried.

  ‘Why, the war,’ I said.

  ‘What war?’

  ‘The present one,’ I replied, disconcerted by the question.

  ‘I know of no war,’ he declared. ‘Troy has been sacked.’

  We were interrupted by Beatrice, who rushed up with the news that George was about to take part in the long jump, an event open to all-comers.

  I helped the old man to his feet and shook him by the hand. ‘I remember you with fondness,’ I said, though it wasn’t altogether the truth. I had not forgotten the mortifying occasion, after another of his lectures, when, questions having been invited from the floor, he had called me an ass and told me to sit down.

  ‘Hurry,’ Beatrice urged.

  ‘I hope we will meet again,’ I said, shaking him by the hand.

  ‘I trust not, Mr Lyell,’ he replied, which at least showed a flattering remembrance of my geological pursuits, however wide of the mark. ‘My regards to your daughter.’

  ‘Did he mean me?’ Beatrice demanded to know.

  ‘Who else?’ I said, at which she glowed.

  George didn’t do spectacularly well in his competition. His brother Freddie, alas dead from inflammation of the brain, had been the sportsman of the family. All the same, when he sped across the ground and launched himself into the air, the sun transforming his leaping head into a helmet of gold, we roared ourselves hoarse.

  An hour later, as Beatrice was chivvying us to leave, George insisted we must pose for a photograph. He had seen a man with a camera standing before a dark tent near one of the fountains. So we lined up, some of us rearranging ourselves in the small hope of minimising physical defects, Beatrice, under the guise of appearing reflective, propping her chin on her finger, Annie slipping off her shoes so as to come down in height. As for myself, I took up the elder child, careful to let its petticoats dangle upon my belly, at which it howled and George ordered me to give it to its mother, who was already clutching the younger infant to her breast. Behind us, a tug-of-war progressed, officers versus men, the pig-grunts of the participants punctuating the struggle.

  We stood there a long time, motionless as statues, except for the children. ‘Be still, my sweet babes,’ Myrtle murmured, as they leapt like fish in her arms.

  Our visit to the opera took place at a late hour, long after we had eaten dinner. The theatre was in Pera, in the European quarter of the town, next door to a grog-shop bursting with soldiers. There was such a caterwauling issuing from within, one might have thought they were performing an opera of their own.

  I was cross with Beatrice for making me put on my best clothes, the interior of the theatre being nothing short of filthy. Fortunately, we had a box and were somewhat elevated from the squalor. Even so, though I kept it from Beatrice, I brushed two cockroaches from her seat before she sat down. The stench both from below and from the establishment next door, a mixture of frying onions, beer and something sweetly rotten, was unbearable and kept us constantly flapping our handkerchiefs before our noses. Along the edge of the stage, perilously close to the tattered velvet curtains, stood a line of burning oil lamps, some with missing cowls. I took the precaution of examining the narrow passageway behind our chairs, and threw into the street several articles of broken furniture, which, in the event of fire, would surely have hindered our escape.

  Myrtle sat as though in a trance, oblivious to her surroundings. Tomorrow the children would leave for England, and her heart had hardened to ice at the prospect. Then, some moments before the interval, I heard a strange mewing sound, which instantly brought back memories of Mrs O’Gorman’s kitchen and the cry of the stable cat prowling the bucket in which its kittens lay drowned. Startled, I glanced at Myrtle, and saw her cheeks were wet.

  It was the music, according to George, that had thawed her, though how such a modern composer as Verdi, all discords and jangles, had the power to move anyone to tears, unless from sheer irritation, was beyond my comprehension. Beatrice put a consoling arm round her, and Annie, who found it difficult to show sympathy, from embarrassment rather than feeling, ferreted out her smelling salts.

  It was only after the curtain had fallen that I noticed Naughton in the box opposite, seated alongside his crony the engineer and Mrs Yardley and her colonel in the Guards. Naughton was staring to the left of our group, an expression of rage tormenting his features. Following the direction of his infuriated gaze, I leant out to spy on the adjacent box. It housed an adolescent female, of dusky complexion, clasped in the passionate embrace of a young man brilliantly attired in the uniform of Lord Cardigan’s 11th Hussars.

  Some minutes later I saw Naughton making his way across the front of the auditorium. Arriving beneath our dusty cubicle, he looked up, first at Myrtle, who was in the act of dabbing at her eyes, then to her left. If such a thing is possible, I swear his lip curled. Then he walked purposefully towards the doors at the back of the theatre. Meanwhile, Mrs Yardley was energetically signalling to me, waving her programme and generally making a show of herself. As for the engineer, he was standing up, shoulders hunched like a prize-fighter, punching the air with his fists. I reckoned the pair of them were drunk and said as much to George, but when I succeeded in bringing his attention to the box opposite, the engineer had disappeared.

  ‘It’s extraordinary how foreign parts bring out the worst in people,’ I remarked to Beatrice, who told me to shush as the orchestra were again filing into the pit.

  The second half had just commenced, chorus gloomily wailing, when I heard footsteps thudding along the passageway behind. Then came a crash and a mumble of unintelligible words; my chair shook as something heavy bounced against our partition. Every eye in the house now turned in our direction, including those of the singers on stage. A voice – later identified as that of the engineer – distinctly shouted, ‘Don’t be a b—fool.’ Craning forwards, I was flabbergasted to see Naughton, on his back, bent over the edge of the box next door at such an angle that his head dangled above the orchestra pit. He was leant over by the hussar, who had his hands round Naughton’s throat. A good proportion of the audience, shamefully yelling encouragement, jumped to its feet.

  There followed a most dramatic incident, far exceeding in authenticity and excitement anything we had yet seen on stage. Naughton, scrabbling desperately at his assailant’s breast, managed to hook his fingers through the golden frogging of that splendid coat. The hussar, no doubt appalled at the thought of such defacement, loosened his hold and attempted to prise himself free, at which Naughton, levering himself upright and twisting sideways, jerked him off balance, sending him toppling across the edge of the box. Teetering, the hussar raised one hand, and tracing what appeared to be the sign of the cross, dropped to the boards below. For the first time I grasped the purpose of music, my emotions being considerably heightened by the continued playing of the orchestra – the unfortunate fellow landed to the accompaniment of percussion.

  George hurried downstairs and, pushing aside the agitated crowd, did what he could for the fallen man. The rest of us stayed put, not wishing to add to the crush. There was a tremendous hubbub coming from the passageway; peeping out I was astonished to see Naughton being dragged off by half a dozen burly Turks. The engineer, much distressed, burst in among us and declared he himself was partly to blame. ‘I should have stopped him earlier,’ he shouted. ‘By God, I could see which way the wind was blowing.’

  Taking him out into the passage I asked him to explain what had happened. What was the quarrel about? Why had Naughton been attacked in such a brutal manner?

  ‘It was Naughton who did the attacking,’ cried the distraught engineer. ‘He just dashed into the box and slapped the hussar across the face.’

  ‘But for what reason?’ I demanded, though I had a sudden and horrid suspicion I already knew.

  ‘Why, on account of Miss Hardy … for
treating her so badly. There he sat, not ten paces away, his arm round that low woman … and Miss Hardy in tears at the affront.’

  ‘I advise you to go back to the hotel,’ I said. ‘In the morning … when you’re calmer … we can call on the English consul.’

  ‘I should have prevented him,’ the engineer moaned, and ran off down the passage.

  The affair ended better than one had feared. The captain, though bruised and having had all the breath knocked from his body, broke neither neck nor back. Suffering from nothing worse than a sprained ankle, he was helped to his barracks by comrades summoned from the grog-shop nearby.

  George and I kept silent on the ride home. Both of us had reason to feel ashamed. I couldn’t help thinking of the duck-boy, Pompey Jones, and how I had upbraided him over the childish nonsense of the tiger-skin rug.

  Cause and effect, I thought. One should never underestimate the disruptive force of haphazard actions.

  I rented the top half of a house at Scutari. George, who, until we joined him, had been sleeping at the hospital, was delighted at the move. Our windows overlooked the sea of Marmora and he was within walking distance, through the yard of a mosque, of the Great Barrack. Beyond what was absolutely essential, we had little in the way of furniture and Myrtle insisted it stayed that way. I was all for rushing off to procure sideboards and pictures and the like, but she said we weren’t at home and it was no good pretending life was as it had always been. As it happened, we weren’t destined to stay there very long.

  A most remarkable change took place in Myrtle – in her appearance, that is. While George and I visibly lost weight, owing to heat and a restricted diet, etc., she appeared to gain some; her cheeks filled out and her throat and arms became rounded. Her face, once pale, turned golden in the sun and as she refused to cover her head, her hair leapt with threads of fiery colour. Result – it was as though Myrtle, previously lurking in mist; had now emerged into the light. I doubt if George noticed the difference, he being so preoccupied with other matters, but I did feel it was just as well poor, deluded Naughton was no longer on the scene. If he had been smitten before, this new, glowing Myrtle might well have sent him into madness. Naughton, after a hefty sum had been raised to sweeten the Turkish authorities – I myself, or rather George, having contributed generously to the fund – had been shipped off home. I accompanied him to the boat, where, before boarding and too distressed to speak, he clung to my hand like a drowning man. I’d adjusted my expression accordingly, though I reckon shame still swam in my eyes.

  In June, George was summoned to Constantinople to appear before the Army Medical Staff. He was informed that henceforth he would be attached, in the capacity of Assistant Surgeon, to the 2nd division, presently to be quartered at Varna. He advised me not to tell Myrtle the reason for his appointment – no fewer than three doctors had successively held the post before him, and all had succumbed to cholera.

  I expressed alarm, but he assured me that the danger of infection was as great here as there. For weeks, hundreds of the sick had been arriving at Scutari. The disease had taken such a hold that the dying lay in mouldering rows along the endless corridors of the Barrack Hospital. So much death and still a shot not fired!

  I’m not a brave man and I must admit it did cross my mind that I might return to Constantinople and thence home. I suspect I would have done so, had it not been for Myrtle. Nothing on earth would have persuaded her to leave George, and if a mere woman was willing to stand her ground, how could I possibly turn tail?

  We sailed a week later, in twilight, past the picturesque houses of the grand pashas; past the tomb of Barbarossa, conqueror of Algiers; past the darkening gardens amid the cypress trees, the keel of our ship trailing a dancing path of phosphorus light along the waters of the Bosphorus. In our wake flew a swarm of small birds, no bigger than robins, which are never seen to settle, but must always be in flight. The Turks, so I was told, suppose them to be the souls of women whom the Sultan has drowned.

  Our journey took two days; on the morning of the second, while we were at table, a young officer in the Dragoons, in the middle of telling the company how he regretted leaving his tennis racquet at home, suddenly slumped over his plate. George, on propping him upright – he had attended him the night before on account of stomach pains – pronounced him dead. For a short while the dragoon sat there, mouth open. We too continued to sit, as though unwilling to interrupt him. When at last he was carried out, Myrtle rose and tenderly shook the breadcrumbs from his hair.

  To say we landed at Varna was inaccurate; we fell down rather than disembarked, the pier being rotten. We had to wade through mud to reach solid ground. One of the horses broke a leg and had to be shot where it lay. It was dragged further out into the Black Sea, where it floated beneath a canopy of flies.

  The town was in a state of considerable disorder due to its swollen population. The numbers of horses, troops and supply carts struggling up from the port made the narrow streets almost impossible to negotiate. There were rats openly burrowing among the mounds of refuse outside the provision shops. Even Myrtle remarked on the filth and confusion. My dreams of finding a pretty little house to rent, with tubs of plants on the veranda and the stem of a vine climbing to the roof, flew out of the window. Every available dwelling, beside providing refuge for numerous species of the insect world, was largely given over to human vermin, namely wine merchants and horse dealers, lured from every corner of the Levant by the heady stench of war.

  George went off to report to the General Hospital, leaving Myrtle and me to wend our way some miles west of the town to where the army camp was stationed, tents pitched on either side of the road and extending upwards on to the hilly ground above a large lake formed by the river Devna. Downstream spread a second, smaller lake, the area surrounded by marshland which, though pleasant enough by day, at night gave off a noxious mist. I understood from the Greek villain who guided us there that it is in the vicinity of the military burial ground in which lie the remains of six thousand Russian victims of the plague of ’29. After purchasing, at exorbitant prices, tents and cooking pots, we settled ourselves some distance downhill from the smaller lake. As to drinking water, there were some excellent springs nearby.

  It was only a matter of hours before I realised the extent of the dreadful pickle we were in; no sooner had night fallen than a wretched procession of men, some slung over the shoulders of comrades, stumbled past our fire and vanished into the darkness. I was told they were being marched to the river to clean themselves and were, as yet, suffering from nothing more serious than diarrhoea, although there were rumours that cholera had begun to rage through the French camp situated in the supposedly healthier region to the north-east.

  George joined us a day later kitted out in what was claimed to be the uniform of an officer of the 2nd division. His garments were so faded and shrunken that it proved impossible to guess at their original colour; they had obviously been worn by the former unfortunate regimental incumbent – if not all three. Obliged, at his own expense, to purchase regulation boots, he was asked to fill out numerous documents, only to be told that it would be weeks, possibly months, before the desired footwear arrived.

  Conditions at the hospital, he informed me, were disgraceful. There were too few sappers to put the place to rights and he gathered the authorities did not or would not recognise the urgency. Attempts had been made to improve the ventilation by removing planks in the roof, but the place was miserably dirty and provided a veritable Valhalla for fleas, cockroaches and rats. Nor were there sufficient medical supplies. On his first afternoon, he dealt with a man who, following a drunken fall from a horse, had broken his lower jaw. There being nothing else available in the way of splints he was forced to use the pasteboard covers of a book – The Wide, Wide World – to set the injury. Until whitewashed throughout the building remained uninhabitable, and it was his firm diagnosis that a man would die there quicker than in camp. He scratched ferociously all night long and ro
bbed me of sleep.

  I myself cut a sorry figure following the thoughtless handing over of the clothes I stood up in, much stiffened by my romp through the mud, to a washerwoman. Result – I spent a whole day, naked and wrapped in a grimy horse-blanket, waiting for her return. She never did, and to add to my sartorial troubles the ship that carried our trunks failed to arrive, having reportedly caught fire a mile out of Scutari. Myrtle went off and, finding a seller of second-hand clothing, kindly purchased on my behalf a clerical suit styled in a fashion last favoured by my grandfather. She also brought back a top hat, somewhat moth-eaten at the crown. I wore it, ridicule being preferable to sunstroke. She herself donned a long robe, such as worn by Turkish women, in which, almost indecently at ease, she glided about the camp.

  It is curious how quickly one adapts to living in the open. Astonishing too, how used one becomes to hands black as pitch and a beard lively with grease. There is nothing more guaranteed to reduce a man to the essentials than to live beneath the sky.

  I admit I didn’t know who I was any more – my bearings had gone astray along with my trousers. I observed, and wrote down my impressions – by day, to the infernal buzzing of flies; by night, to the barking of dogs and the muffled cries of those disturbed by dreams of home … and worse.

  Deep down I was lost, my mind out of kilter. Often, drifting into sleep I silently recited those lines of Hesiod – They by each others’ hands inglorious fell, In horrid darkness plunged, the house of hell. I fear it was the tough mutton we consumed at sunset, rather than intellect, that dictated my thoughts.

  Plate 4. August 1854

  CONCERT PARTY AT VARNA

  This is the most beautiful spot and I cannot understand why so many fall sick. Possibly it’s the abundance of fruit to be had for the picking – cherries and strawberries grow wild in the meadows beyond the tents. I have never felt more healthy in my life.