Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  He got up and sat on the edge of the pool; under the green strata of mosses the scaled goldfish moved slowly in their palaces of burning gold. He wiped his face which was sweating.

  ‘Five days ago I got this letter from America,’ he said. ‘From her.’

  Brownlow-Grace said, ‘That was a bit of luck.’ Weston laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. It was nice of her to write. She put it very nicely, too. Would you like to read it?’

  ‘No,’ said Brownlow-Grace. ‘I don’t want to read it.’

  ‘She said it often entered her mind to write to me, because I had been so sweet to her, in Lille, that time. She hoped I was well. To enter America there had been certain formalities, she said; she’d married an American, a country which has all types, she said. There is a life, she said, but not mine, and a war also, but not mine. Now it is the Japanese. That’s all she said.’

  ‘She remembered you,’ Brownlow-Grace said.

  ‘Some things stick in a woman’s mind,’ Weston said. ‘She darned my socks for me in bed. Why didn’t she say she remembered darning my socks?’

  Brownlow-Grace pressed his hand, fingers extended, upon the surface of the water, not breaking its resistance, quite.

  ‘I don’t use the word,’ he said. ‘But I guess it’s because she loved you.’

  Weston looked up, searching and somehow naïve.

  ‘I don’t mind about the Japanese,’ he said, ‘if that were so.’

  V

  Dad Withers had his medical board first; he wasn’t in the board room long; in fact he was back on the verandah outside ‘O’ 3 (b) when Weston returned from sending a cable at the camp post office.

  ‘Did it go all right, Dad?’ Weston asked.

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Dad said, purring as if at his own cleverness. ‘Three colonels and two majors there, and the full colonel he said to me, “Well, Withers, what’s your trouble? Lieutenant Quartermaster weren’t you?” And I said, “Correct, sir, and now I’m putting my own body in for exchange, sir. It don’t keep the rain out no more, sir.” So he said, “You’re not much use to us, Withers, by the look of you.” And I said, “Not a bit of use, sir, sorry to report.” And the end of it was they give me a free berth on the next ship home wiv full military honours and a disability pension and all. Good going, isn’t it now?’

  ‘Very good, Dad. I’m very pleased.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dad said, his face wrinkled and benign as a tortoise. ‘Now go and get your own ticket and don’t keep the gentlemen waiting…’

  Dad lay half asleep in the deck chair, thinking that it was all buttoned up now, all laid on, all made good. It had been a long time, a lifetime, more than twenty hot seasons, more than twenty rains. Not many could say that. Not many had stuck it like him. Five years in Jhansi with his body red as lobster from head to toe with prickly heat, squirting a water pistol down his back for enjoyment and scratching his shoulders with a long fork from the bazaar. Two big wars there’d been, and most of the boys had been glad to go into them, excited to be posted to France, or embark for Egypt. But he’d stuck it out. Still here, still good for a game of nap, and them all dead, the boys that wanted to get away. And now it was finished with him, too.

  He didn’t know. Maybe he wasn’t going home the way he’d figured it out after all. Maybe there was something else, something he hadn’t counted in. This tiredness, this emptiness, this grey blank wall of mist, this not caring. What would it be like in the small council house with five youngsters and his missus? She’d changed a lot, the last photo she sent she was like his mother, spectacles and fat legs, full of plainness. Maybe the kids would play with him, though, the two young ones?

  He pulled himself slowly out of his seat, took out his wallet, counted his money; ninety chips he had. Enough to see India just once again. Poor old India. He dressed hurriedly, combed his thin hair, wiped his spectacles, dusted his shoes and left before the others came back. He picked up a tonga at the stand outside the main gates of the hospital cantonment, just past the MD lines, and named a certain hotel down town. And off he cantered, the skinny old horse clattering and letting off great puffs of bad air under the tonga wallah’s whip, and Dad shouting, ‘Jillo, jillo,’ impatient to be drunk.

  Brownlow-Grace came in and went straight to the little bed table where he kept his papers in an untidy heap. He went there in a leisurely way, avoiding the inquiring silences of Weston and Moncrieff and Sister Normanby, who were all apparently doing something. He fished out an airgraph form and his fountain pen and sat quietly on the edge of his bed.

  ‘Oh damn and blast it,’ he said angrily. ‘My pen’s dry.’

  Weston gave him an inkbottle.

  He sat down again.

  ‘What’s the date?’ he said after a minute.

  ‘12th,’ Moncrieff said.

  ‘What month?’ he asked.

  ‘December.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He wrote slowly, laboriously, long pauses between sentences. When he finished he put his pen away and looked for a stamp.

  ‘What stamp d’you put on an airgraph?’ he said.

  ‘Three annas,’ Moncrieff said patiently.

  Sister Normanby decided to abolish the embarrassing reticence with which this odd man was concealing his board result. She had no room for broody hens.

  ‘Well,’ she said, gently enough. ‘What happened at the board?’

  He looked up at her and neither smiled nor showed any sign of recognition. Then he stood up, took his cane and peaked service cap, and brushed a speck of down off his long and well-fitting trousers.

  ‘They discharged me,’ he said. ‘Will you post this airgraph for me, please?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and for some odd reason she found herself unable to deal with the situation and took it from him and went on with her work.

  ‘I’m going out,’ he said.

  Weston followed him into the garden and caught him up by the lily pool.

  ‘Is that invitation still open?’ he asked.

  ‘What invitation?’ Brownlow-Grace said.

  ‘To go on the spree with you tonight?’ Weston said.

  Brownlow-Grace looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind, Anthony,’ he said – Weston was pleasurably aware of this first use of his Christian name – ‘I don’t think I’d be any use to you tonight. Matter of fact, I phoned Rita just now, you know the woman who comes to see me, and she’s calling for me in five minutes.’

  ‘I see,’ Weston said. ‘OK by me.’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he said. ‘I don’t think you need Rita’s company, do you? Besides, she usually prefers one man at a time. She’s the widow of a friend of mine, Mostyn Turner; he was killed in Burma, too.’

  Weston came back into the ward to meet Sister Normanby’s white face. ‘Where’s he gone?’ she said.

  Weston looked at her, surprised at the emotion and stress this normally imperturbable woman was showing.

  He didn’t answer her.

  ‘He’s gone to that woman,’ she said, white and virulent.

  ‘Hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he has,’ he said quietly.

  ‘She always has them when they’re convalescent,’ she said, flashing with venom. She picked up her medicine book and the jar with her thermometer in it. ‘I have them when they’re sick.’

  She left the ward, biting her white lips.

  ‘I didn’t know she felt that way about him,’ Weston said.

  ‘Neither did she,’ said Moncrieff. ‘She never knows till it’s too late. That’s the beauty about her. She’s virginal.’

  ‘You’re very cruel, Moncrieff.’

  Moncrieff turned on him like an animal.

  ‘Cruel?’ he said. ‘Cruel? Well, I don’t lick Lazarus’ sores, Weston. I take the world the way it is. Nobody cares about you out here. Nobody. What have I done to anybody? Why should they keep me here? What’s the use of keeping a man with infantile paralysis and six
inches of bone missing from his leg? Why didn’t the board let me go home?’

  ‘You’ll go home, monkey, you’ll go home,’ Weston said gently. ‘You know the Army. You can help them out here. You’re bound to go home, when the war ends.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Moncrieff said. ‘Do you?’ He thought of this for a minute at least. Then he said, ‘No, I shall never go home, I know it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, monkey. You’re a bit run down, that’s all.’ Weston soothed him. ‘Let’s go and sit by the pool for a while.’

  ‘I like the pool,’ Moncrieff said. They strolled out together and sat on the circular ledge. The curving bright branches held their leaves peacefully above the water.

  Under the mosses they could see the old toad of the pond sleeping, his back rusty with jewels. Weston put his hand in the water; minnows rose in small flocks and nibbled at his fingers. Circles of water lapped softly outwards, outwards, till they touched the edge of the pool, and cast a gentle wetness on the stone, and lapped again inwards, inwards. And as they lapped inwards he felt the ripples surging against the most withdrawn and inmost ledges of his being, like a series of temptations in the wilderness. And he felt glad tonight, feeling some small salient gained when for many reasons the men whom he was with were losing ground among the whole front to the darkness that there is.

  ‘No,’ said Moncrieff at last. ‘Talking is no good. But perhaps you will write to me sometimes, will you, just to let me know.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll write to you, monkey,’ Weston said, looking up.

  And then he looked away again, not willing to consider those empty, inarticulate eyes.

  ‘The mosquitoes are starting to bite,’ he said. ‘We’d better go now.’

  MRS ARMITAGE

  Emyr Humphreys

  I

  ‘This unfortunate woman’ was the phrase that tapped away in the Rector’s brain as he listened to Mrs Armitage’s high-pitched yet well-controlled voice speaking fluent and idiomatic English with an accent that remained obstinately German. She sometimes spoke of her schloss in Kärnten, but the only dwelling he had known her to have was the two rooms of the Charitable Institution, bluntly in Welsh Yr Elusendy (the almshouse) but in English The Endowment for Decayed Gentlewomen of which he, all honour and worry to him, was Secretary. It added one hundred pounds a year to his stipend and involved little administrative work. The main task was to listen sympathetically to the endless complaints of six or seven difficult and discontented old women.

  ‘It is not that I am afraid of dying, Mr Mayrick. It’s just that I dislike the idea of my body lying in one of those two rooms for days on end without anyone knowing.’ Her voice, like her large eyes, still had vitality and power, but the rest of her seemed the work of a tipsy taxidermist: her long legs bent in an untidy bow, her back hunched, and her large well-powdered face suspended above her trunk, sometimes trembled slightly as if about to fall off. It was a remnant of personal dignity, not bodily strength, that still gave her power over her movements. ‘Will you please take this duplicate key of my door? I’ve attached a label with my name and number, in case the key gets mixed up with others.’

  Nodding wisely, but with a spasm of inward discomfort, the Rector accepted the key and dropped it into one of the drawers of his large untidy desk. No doubt his wife had told the old girl more than once that he was untidy. It was rather unfair of Meg really. This old Austrian was a difficult case. She attended service regularly, English or Welsh (unlike Miss Hoxham who never saw the need for a Welsh service since she didn’t know the language herself). In fact, she did not complain half as much as the other inmates. But when she did complain she did so with such precision, usually suggesting a reasonable seeming remedy, which was uncomfortable, because whatever you did in that place, it always led to more trouble.

  There could be no doubt about it that she was most unpopular among her neighbours at the institution. Some of them hated her with astonishing violence. Miss Hoxham, for example, saying, all out of her picture-book-little-old-lady-lace-bonnet appearance: ‘I tell you, Mr Mayrick, it would be no crime to stick a knife into that black foreign heart.’ That had really shaken him. In fact, he had never got over it and it had made him think seriously of seeking a new living. The Bishop had no idea of what he had to put up with. A living in a Depressed Area in the South would in many ways be preferable.

  Most of the old women were jealous because ‘the Austrian witch’ was so friendly with his wife. That was the source of more than half the trouble. Meg had spent three months in the Tyrol in her undergraduate days and knew, or fancied she knew, German. She could never hear enough of the old girl’s stories of foreign royalty, especially the Hapsburgs, which was odd really, because, before the war, with his wholehearted approval, of course, Meg had belonged to the Left Book Club in the most enthusiastic way. The old Bishop had been rather annoyed about Meg’s politics in those days. But there we are, imaginative people are not expected to be consistent.

  ‘I know I am asking too much of you, Mr Mayrick.’ He wondered anxiously what was coming next. (She always gave you time to wonder but never time to escape.) ‘But you and your dear wife had shown me so much Christian kindness, I dare to ask for a little more.’

  ‘We have done nothing at all, Mrs Armitage, I assure you…’ His pipe went out and he stopped talking, trying to light it again and glad not to have to finish the sentence.

  ‘It is time I made my will, Mr Mayrick. May I ask you to draw it up for me?’

  ‘I could try, Mrs Armitage,’ he smiled nervously.

  ‘Your wife told me how you help poor people sometimes in this way.’ (Confound Meg’s easy tongue.) ‘My will is really very small. I have nothing except my bits of furniture and a few things of sentimental value. Hardly any money at all. Nothing more. But what I have I should like to bequeath to your wife.’

  The third match burnt his finger before he shook it out. She was quite the most difficult of his parishioners. It was so embarrassing, what on earth could he say?

  ‘Well, Mrs Armitage, I really don’t know what to say… that is… well… it is difficult, you know… to advise you for the best. It’s extremely kind of you, of course… very kind indeed… but I don’t really think, well to be perfectly frank with you it would be, well… rather improper of me to draw up such a will, much as I want to help you, all I can, of course, all I can…’

  After all, after leaving her things to his wife, wouldn’t she have some kind of a claim on them? That was a difficult point really. The Rector came of a family of Cardiganshire hill farmers who took property seriously. Property was like life itself, infinitely desirable and yet involving endless obligations. She might even try to move into the Rectory, so many empty rooms. That was really intolerable! Meg had enough work to do. And how could he get on with his work if his peace of mind was disturbed? Was that perhaps what she was after? She was always longing to get away from the institution.

  ‘There is no one else. I have no one. She has been kind to me. She is interested in Austria. It would please her to have them. I don’t want those vandals and harpies at the institution to get at my things. I know how they would enjoy stepping over my dead body and smashing up my room.’

  ‘Really, Mrs Armitage!’

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Mayrick. But you see, I am a realist. I know how terrible old women can be. After all, I am one myself.’

  There was such sudden charm in her smile, such gracious calm, how could he but smile back, even though he had not the slightest desire to do so.

  ‘And my wife, Mrs Armitage…?’

  ‘She knows nothing about my little scheme. She is so charming, Mr Mayrick, so innocent if that is the right word. Innocent in a special way, a Welsh way. And yet a way all her own too. Her face can light up with pleasure like a child’s. You are a very fortunate man.’

  At this point, after a light knock on the door, Mrs Mayrick came in, a shopping basket on her arm, breathless and smiling. Usually her girlishness (after
all she was thirty-eight) tended to irritate Mr Mayrick; but at this moment her presence warmed and excited him, and almost against his will, under the spell of the old woman’s words, he saw her as Primavera in a raincoat, a visitation on the threshold of his so familiar room.

  ‘How nice to see you, Mrs Armitage! Now you must stay to tea. I won’t be a minute. Pop on the electric kettle. You won’t mind having it with us in the kitchen? It’s Elsie’s day off, you know. Cosy cup of tea and a chat. I’ll knock the wall when it’s ready, Hywel.’

  Out she went, leaving him alone with Mrs Armitage again, and even more uncertain what to say next. As he lit his pipe he allowed himself to wonder for a second time, what exactly Mrs A. (as he and Meg usually called her) had got to leave. This annoyed him by making him feel guilt for something he hadn’t even contemplated doing. He was also feeling cross with her for disturbing tea-in-the-kitchen a meal he always enjoyed having alone with Meg.

  Mrs Armitage’s silence, too, was becoming extremely annoying; sitting on the edge of one of his armchairs like a living reproach. That so talkative a person should find it easier to remain silent now than he did, seemed to reflect against his character. All his life he had prided himself on his ability to keep his mouth shut, among people given to speaking first and thinking afterwards. Would it be too rude for him to get up and ask her to excuse him? There were some raspberries he knew of unpicked in a corner of the garden. And he could think much more clearly when left alone.

  ‘Do you think’ – she had struggled out of the chair and was hobbling towards the door – ‘I could help your dear wife?’ The door open, she called down the corridor: ‘Mrs Mayrick, may I come along and help? I do so enjoy cutting bread and butter.’

  The muffled answer was some kind of acceptance. The Rector was left alone with his thought and his pipe. He heaved an agreeable sigh, picked up the Manchester Guardian and tried to forget her.

  After all, the unfortunate woman was not nearly so interesting and exceptional as Meg chose to believe. All over Europe there were thousands of broken-down aristocrats, flotsam left behind by the ebb-tide of an epoch. (Put that somewhere in sermon. Need for sympathy, toleration, broadview, etc.) It was also part of the rough justice of history. (Not so easy to fit into an acceptable sermon.) She was just much luckier than the rest, married to an Englishman. An improvident and reckless type no doubt, the late Mr Armitage, something of an adventurer; but nevertheless an Englishman, partaker of rights and privileges; civis Romanus sum, bestowed by marriage also on this alien woman.