The Whites of Gold

by Sam Lock

  ‘Then how can I help you? You’re my best friend, Thelma. You always have been. So what can I do to help?’

  ‘What you’re doing now, pet. Letting me spill a bit, so that I don’t boil over. Letting me just talk and being a good listener – which is what you always are. Do you know that? A really good one. And there aren’t many of those.’

  ‘Well, if that’s all I have to do, it isn’t difficult,’ I answered. ‘Look – let’s go out, shall we? Go to Mark’s place – in Fulham. Have a few drinks … We don’t go out together very often these days. Wouldn’t it be nice; fun; wouldn’t it be good for us?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I can do that, Eddie,’ she said. ‘I don’t drink a lot, and – well – there’s Mark. I’m not sure that he likes me.’

  ‘Thelma! Whatever makes you think that?’

  ‘I just do. I always have done. Ever since we first met.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that’s because you were nervous of him, Thelma; and perhaps he was nervous of you. After all, it’s quite new for me to have a friend – to have found someone I really like at last.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she answered, but she refused to go out; and we just sat there talking and drinking coffee until midnight.

  The nights are getting longer. Autumn is here already, and in the parks and gardens of the city the first dead leaves are now fluttering down from the trees. What a year it has been! A year of the old and the new, it could be called, I suppose. The new being my having met Mark and his having so quickly become such a part of my life, and the old, the excursions I have made into the past that have stirred up so many memories.

  In those narrow country lanes, where I walked so often as a child, the winter berries will have already formed; grey-green at first, now touched by reds and golds. And in the coarse bracken close to the moors, the fruits of the wild blackberry bush will now be soft and sweet – ripe, and ready for picking. Soon, too, once the corn has been cut and its grain been stored, and once its straw has been bundled for winter bedding, the time of the Harvest Festival will begin. Huge loaves will be baked – some in the form of fan-shaped sheaves of wheat – ready to be placed upon the windowsills or before the altars of the area’s small stone churches.

  I can see it – hear it all – so clearly. The parson shuffling his way towards the pulpit, as the congregation sits, then coughs, then settles in the pews; with the white surplice of his robes dangling across the pulpit’s edge, and mingling with the mixture of fruit and flowers that adorn it – and for which he and his congregation are now about to give thanks.

  ‘All is safely gathered in’, the choir will assert (defiantly, I used to think), before the ‘winter storms begin’. Or it will be, ‘We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land’. Which we do, of course; but we sow the seeds of our life without much thought, it seems to me, casting them here and there in our early years, with no mind as to whether they might fall upon stony ground or not. Then, with time, they grow – or some of them do.

  For me, I know that when I was young and still in my teens, and when I was deciding that I would leave home, I was certainly casting seeds upon new ground, hoping to free myself from things that were cluttering me and were inhibiting my life. And I believed that what I was doing was right; that it was an action I had to take, or that I was meant to take. Yet for all the dramatics of that act, the rewards reaped have hardly been spectacular. After all, what am I? What have I become? A clerk – just that – working in a small South Kensington office. That is all. I’ve not been to college, for instance, or university. Not furthered myself in that respect. I have learned a lot through Len, it is true; and I have grown to love books and words – and paintings as well. But it’s no great achievement, not when I think of what others do with their lives.

  There is Mark – yes. At least there I have managed to find someone I really like at last; perhaps even love – and that’s important, of course, as it would be to anyone, whatever their sexual tastes and prejudices. To have someone close to you is important; it helps to put meaning into your life. But on the other hand – seeing the more negative side of things – I still haven’t given up stealing. The compulsive need to acquire things that do not belong to me still bothers me at times; much as I have been able to restrain myself of late and have somehow held it in check.

  So, in a way, you could say that, from a sociological point of view, I am not a very nice person. I’m certainly not doing much for the world – that’s for sure, in that I am not doing much for others. Just seeing to myself – that’s all. Just making sure that I don’t hurt anyone too much. Just doing my best to find out a little of who exactly I am. However, I do have a right to take some pride in that, I guess, since I am struggling to be honest, at least. A muted life mine might be, and perhaps a rather shaded one as well, in that my stealing is kept secret. But it is a ‘real’ life, none the less, in that I accept its limitations, and that I do my best to honour them and to live within their bounds.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett has died. I heard the news a few weeks ago on the radio and it surprised me; then I saw the obituaries in the newspapers. And soon, in a week or so’s time, there is to be a memorial evening for her here in Chelsea – at Crosby Hall, which is just a short walk from where I live.

  I told Len that I’d like to go to it, since I’ve been an admirer of her writing for so long, and the evening is open to anyone. But I can’t think what form the evening will take, since it’s not to be a religious service of any kind. There’ll be no priest, apparently; none of religion’s mumbo-jumbo; Dame Ivy having been an atheist, of course, and having had little time for religion; or for the Church and for its dogmas.

  So I think I’ll go. Just for the experience. And if I do, then perhaps I shall write a few words about it here – in this journal.

  XI

  This morning, I stole something – a wallet. It is the first time this has happened since I met Mark, and I felt doubly upset on account of that. I kept branding myself as a villain and a weakling – which, I kept telling myself, is what I am; when I thought of the upset it must have caused – meaning, for the person from whom I had stolen the wallet; even though it contained only a relatively small amount of money, a few business cards and a photograph of a child.

  It is weak. It is villainous of me to have done this, I kept telling myself all morning – and there is no excuse for it. My better self does know that it’s wrong; that crime is not noble; that it’s a destructive, negative action; that it’s the opposite of giving: the opposite of loving.

  So I made up my mind then and there that I would speak about it to Mark, and so expose myself for once; even though the idea of my doing this daunted me – particularly because it had to be done at lunchtime, when Mark and I had arranged to meet in a bar.

  ‘Where?’ was his immediate reaction. ‘Where did this happen?’

  ‘On my way to work,’ I answered with my head lowered. ‘In a newsagent’s, where I had gone to buy a paper. The man had decided to pay with coins, and had left the wallet on the counter, and I – well, I just took it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mark, ‘we’re going there.’

  ‘We’re what?’ I almost screamed at him, suddenly feeling frightened.

  ‘We’re going there: to the shop: to the newsagent’s. We’re going to say we’ve found the wallet in the street, and are wondering if some customer has lost it.’

  ‘But they know me!’ I said. ‘I go there often. They’ll remember that I was there this morning. They’ll think it was me.’

  ‘Well, it was you,’ Mark answered, sharply. ‘So the thing to do is to take it back.’

  ‘And say I took it?’

  ‘No, of course not, stupid. Just say you found it in the street – as I said.’

  ‘As if they’ll believe that.’

  ‘Look,’ said Mark. ‘They’ll be glad that someone’s brought it back. They won’t have ideas of that kind. You’ll seem to be honest – that’s the main thing.’

>   ‘No, Mark,’ I answered, ‘I don’t want to do it.’

  ‘Then I’ll do it,’ he replied. ‘I’ll take it back. I’ll say I found it nearby. I’ll say –’

  ‘Mark, please,’ I answered him, now almost white with fright at the idea, since it was the first time that I had even thought of returning an object that I had stolen – or, more accurately, that someone had suggested to me that I should.

  Mark then ordered me (there is no other word to describe it) to look at him. ‘Straight in the eye,’ he said … ‘Now,’ he continued, once I had done what he had asked, ‘are you going to do this, Edwin, or not? If I come with you? Or are you going to force me to do it for you?’

  I knew we had reached a kind of climax – a clash of wills that had to be faced. And I knew as well, by the way that he had looked at me, that Mark was making a real test of it: that if I said no he would feel let down; feel that, after having confided in him – having almost asked him to help me put things right – I lacked the courage to follow my action through. So I said nothing. Just waited; almost watching myself, until the knowledge of what I could do – not what I must do – came to me.

  ‘Well?’ said Mark – not pressingly, but in a very quiet, very patient manner.

  I looked at him and at his squarish, well-shaped head; at the neat cut of his hair and at his steady, dark-brown eyes; and saw there a being whom I valued; one who meant more to me at that moment than any other in my life.

  ‘Well?’ Mark repeated, in the same steady, quiet voice.

  ‘I’ll do it, but I don’t want you to come with me … Now,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it now, before I go back to work.’

  ‘You sure?’ Mark asked, wondering if I was seeking to get out of it, I thought.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  And I did. I walked back to the shop, went straight into it, then asked the man behind its counter whether, by any chance, a customer of his had lost a wallet.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Have you found one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and took the wallet out of my pocket.

  The man looked at me in what I took to be a questioning way, then suddenly ducked his head and muttered, ‘Just a moment, sir. I’ll ask my brother,’ and he disappeared into the back of the shop, only to return almost immediately with the man who had served me earlier in the day.

  ‘Yes?’ the man said, screwing up his nose and looking across at me from behind half-moon, wire-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘A wallet,’ I replied, trying not to seem nervous. ‘I was wondering if one of your customers has lost one. This one,’ I said. ‘I found it in the street – just a few yards away – and was about to take it to the police.’

  The man took the wallet from me.

  ‘Do you mind if I look inside it?’ he then asked, which at first puzzled me.

  ‘Of course not.’ I replied. ‘There’s some money – a few notes; a photograph; a few business cards.’

  ‘Well – yes,’ he said, as he examined the wallet and drew out of it one of its owner’s business cards: ‘This is someone who calls here most days. I recognise the name. And he was here this morning. But he didn’t say he had lost anything. He paid with change from his pocket, as I recall.’

  ‘Perhaps you could ring him,’ I said, ‘since he’s a customer of yours. It has to be his – doesn’t it?’

  I began to fear that he might suggest my taking the wallet to the police, which is what I dreaded the most.

  ‘Oh, well – that’s a good idea. Just hang on, will you?’ he answered with a broad smile.

  The man disappeared into the back of the shop again and his brother looked at me and nodded. Then other customers came in and he began to serve them.

  I don’t know whether I nodded back to him or not. I don’t think that I did. I think that I just stood there somewhat rigid, cut off from what was happening; which I can now see was probably a form of self-protection. What I do recall is studying the shelves behind the shop’s counter, and registering the various brand-names of the cigarettes on display. Also, that there was a neat stack of Swan Vestas matches, as well as a few small boxes of snuff.

  ‘He hadn’t even missed it!’ the man who had made the telephone call cried out to me as he returned. ‘He’s really pleased: says how can he thank you?’

  ‘I don’t need thanks,’ I said, feeling relieved. ‘I just – well, just wanted to make sure it had found its owner, that’s all. And it has.’

  ‘Well, it’s very good of you. Very kind of you, Mr –?’

  ‘Carpenter,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry – I didn’t know your name,’ the man answered. ‘We don’t know the names of many of our customers, I’m afraid. Or, if we do, it’s just their first names – Bill, or whatever.’

  ‘Well, all’s well that ends well,’ I said; a little stupidly, I thought, since it was so out of character for me to speak in that way.

  ‘It certainly is,’ the man replied with a grin. ‘Pity there aren’t more like you around, Mr Carpenter. With money in it – notes – most people would just take it for themselves and throw the wallet away.’

  ‘Gracious me!’ I exclaimed, or something of that kind; and, with a nod of goodbye to his brother, I shook his hand and left. I didn’t feel at all proud of what I had done, but just glad that it had been done with comparative ease. I felt too that this act had meant a huge change in my life: that I had relieved myself of some of the darkness with which I was burdened. At the same time, though, I was aware that, without Mark having prompted me into it, it was something that couldn’t have happened. It was his will that had swayed mine; I had allowed it to guide and govern my action; and because of that, I felt only little in the way of what one might call any moral form of improvement.

  Still, it was something, at least: something different; a new twist in the way things happen. And I have to confess that this evening when I came home, and before I began making this entry in my journal, I did allow myself to picture for a brief moment the deep look of pleasure there must have been on the face of the owner of the wallet, when, out of the blue, so to speak, he had learned by way of the telephone not only that he had lost something he no doubt valued, but also that it had been found and was now being returned to him.

  Tonight, I have been to the memorial evening in honour of the late Ivy Compton-Burnett, whose work I have admired for so many years and over which I have so often quarrelled with my friend Len. It was held in Crosby Hall, where I said it would be earlier; which is just a few streets away from my flat, and which more or less overlooks the river.

  This was a new thing for me to have done, in that I am not accustomed to literary gatherings of that kind. So I deliberately went early, and was one of the first ‘mourners’ – must I call them that? – to arrive. Which allowed me to tuck myself away at the very back of the hall, where I was sure that no one would notice me. A few of the organisers of the event were already there, but they only glanced at me as I came in – merely checking, I thought, to make sure that I was no one they ought to greet – which made me feel comfortable. What a wonderful thing it was, though, I recall thinking, that this event should be taking place: that people should be gathering here from all over London – and, as far as I knew, from many other places as well – in order to pay their respects to a famous novelist. She wrote nineteen novels in all – I do know that – with the last one yet to be published; and all much in the same style, with few passages of description in them, and composed mostly of dialogue and conversation. And as I sat there, waiting for the evening to begin, I suddenly heard some of Dame Ivy’s characters speaking, and it made me laugh. Not out loud, of course, but inwardly; because there is such a deep vein of humour running through all that she writes – or that she wrote, rather, since she is now with us no longer. And I found myself thinking of the various titles of her books: of Brothers and Sisters, of Manservant and Maidservant, of More Women than Men; and remembering what a particular style of writing she achiev
ed, and of how little her work depended upon the outside world and its depiction. She can never be really popular, I thought, because to read one of her books requires effort; but then, doesn’t anything that is worthwhile need that? And aren’t the rewards almost greater on account of it?

  My ruminating in this fashion had made me forget where I was, and it was only the sudden awareness that the seats surrounding me were now occupied that drew me back towards the evening and to the purpose of my being there in that hall – which was soon quite full; and with everyone being rather quiet and reverential; and not dissimilar, I thought, to a congregation in church.

  That effect didn’t last long, however; for as the evening progressed, and as people were asked to stand up and to say whatever they wished about Dame Ivy – those who had known her, that is – the occasion took on the character not of a church service, or of a religious service of any kind. It became instead something much closer to that of a party. And what was so very moving was that the entire spirit of the evening sprang from the character of the deceased; from her many eccentricities; from the stories told about her famous ‘teas’, which used to be held in the flat she shared in Kensington with her friend Margaret Jourdain; from the one about the curious habit she had of at times thrusting a hand beneath the skirt of her dress in order to withdraw from it a handkerchief; kept, apparently, in a pocket in her underwear. And from one story (related in a letter that was read aloud and that had been sent by someone in the States) about her relationship with T. S. Eliot – the poet – and about how they tended to discuss not art and literature when they met, as one might have expected them to do, but their local butcher and baker and the price of Brussels sprouts!

  How full of warmth the evening was. How full of deep fondness and affection. I felt very honoured and privileged to be present; and envious of the many people there who had known the author in person. Yet, at the same time, the wonderful, the most magical, thing was that, by the time the evening drew to a close, I felt as if she was more than familiar to me and had almost been a friend.