Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

by Angus Wilson

  Gerald would have continued gossiping all day, but when luncheon was finished, Dollie said, 'What on earth's all this about business? Most people mean they want to borrow money. At least that's what I would mean. But you can't, you've always been rolling in the stuff.'

  Once again Gerald told his story. To be telling it to Dollie seemed a final release, the culmination of the long mental struggle. He was, therefore, a bit disconcerted when she said, 'I think you'd better skip the history part, old dear, except where it's essential to what you have to say. I never did understand it very well, though when I was with you I used to think I had a glimmer. But now when I hear you say that you've been worrying all this time about something that happened umpteen years ago, it makes me rather angry. It seems so absolutely piffling.'

  Feeling like a clergyman searching for a modern parallel in a sermon, he began, 'A few moments ago, Dollie, you said that you liked work to be well done. Well, you see ...'

  But she cut him short. 'Oh, don't worry to explain, Gerrie. I'll take your word for it that it's important. As far as I can see, what you're getting at is this - Gilbert faked the burial as one of his ghastly jokes, mainly to spite the Pater. The Pater knew about it years afterwards but never let on for fear of seeming a fool. And the same goes for old Portway. That Barker man helped Gilbert, and he and his daughter blackmailed old Portway over it. Is that what you're saying?'

  Gerald smiled. 'Roughly, yes,' he said.

  'Well,' said Dollie, 'it all sounds very likely. We both know that Gilbert was a bit off his head at times. But perhaps you didn't know that he played these cruel practical jokes. I did. I had an awful time with some beastly letters he wrote to a girl-friend of mine. I suppose nowadays they'd say he was a - what's the word? - sadist; but I've always thought it was just because he hadn't grown up on one side. He was like a filthy-minded schoolboy and a bully. Anyhow, he hated the Pater, so I can well believe he did it. Poor Pater! He was very good to me, but he was the most awful old fraud himself, you know. Oh, not as an historian; you always said he was the goods, and you'd know. But as a man. He just liked listening to his own voice and he was the biggest coward I'd ever known. He'd never have brought himself to speak the truth if it harmed him or Gilbert, especially after Gilbert was killed. He got softer and softer. As to old Portway, I never liked him, you know. I wasn't keen on clergymen, and then he was an awful bolshie. I wouldn't feel quite like that now. Believe it or not, Gerrie, I go to church on Sundays now. And as to his politics, I dare say he did a lot of good. Only he thought an awful lot of himself too. Lilian had spoilt him. They were a spoilt pair, but, of course, they had quite a lot to be conceited about. Lilian used to drive me mad, she was so affected, but then I remember going to see her in that play, Candida. I thought it was awful tripe, but she made me weep. One thing I can tell you - those Barkers were n.b.g.: I saw quite a lot of their dishonesty at Melpham. No, it all sounds awfully likely to me.'

  Gerald said, 'I'm afraid I have to have some proof. You don't remember anything of what happened on that day, do you?'

  Dollie got up and began to make coffee in a percolator. 'I was trying to think,' she said. 'Lilian told me about the discovery, I remember, and the Pater told me all his theories, but I didn't listen. Gilbert was particularly nice that day. But mainly I just remember you.'

  Gerald was very touched. 'That was my trouble,' he said, smiling.

  But Dollie did not smile back. 'Oh dear! The time we wasted,' she said. 'One thing I do think is that Gilbert probably left something behind that upset the Pater very badly. It wasn't just grief he felt when he went through Gilbert's papers, he was horribly shocked. But it may have had nothing to do with Melpham. Gilbert left me some drawings - horrible tortures of animals - that upset me for ages. I used to say that was one of the reasons I went on the razzle-dazzle in those war years, but that was probably only an excuse.'

  'Do you remember,' Gerald asked, 'if Stokesay ever spoke to you about Melpham?'

  'Not about the burial,' Dollie said. 'He wouldn't talk to me about a thing like that. He kept that sort of thing for people like that Miss Lorimer. No. Portway came to see him once or twice at Highgate and they had a terrific confab, but I've no idea what it was about. I've got the Pater's letters, you know. Two boxes of them. I didn't write to you about them, because, well, when the Pater died, I wasn't keen on seeing you. But I offered them to old Sir Edgar Iffley. He said the Pater had sent all his historical stuff to the Association before he died. So I just held on to them. I did have a look at them once for some American who was interested in Gilbert's work, but apart from a few schoolboy letters there was nothing there. He must have destroyed all those letters Gilbert sent from the front. I have a vague idea that I did come across something in old Portway's handwriting but I couldn't be sure of that.'

  She saw him off at the gate; Larwood placed the two boxes of letters in the car. 'I envy you the village,' Gerald said; 'it's charming.'

  'Is it?' Dollie asked. 'It always seems to me a bit got up for tourists, but you have more of an eye for what's beautiful than I have.'

  Gerald felt ashamed of his remark. 'I wish you'd come and see me in London,' he said.

  'I'd love to,' she answered. 'I love staying in town now and again, but I don't do it often. Money goes round all right, but only just.'

  'I could easily put you up at the flat.'

  'All right,' she cried; 'I shall hold you to that. Let me know about all this. I feel rather beastly about the Pater.'

  'So do I,' said Gerald.

  They neither of them mentioned Gilbert.

  When he got back to London that night, Gerald telephoned to Inge to make his regular weekly inquiry after John's progress. She seemed in peculiarly high spirits. 'Thank you, Gerald,' she answered. 'He is so helpless still, but we are very happy. We have now our first fires with the pine cones that give such a lovely scent. We sit at the window and we watch the brown and yellow leaves falling down. Round and round they go, caught in great gusts of wind. Some people are made sad by it. But Johnnie and I are happy. We know that one day will come spring.'

  'Oh! God,' said Gerald somewhat feebly.

  'Here is also little Kay,' Inge cooed, 'with Baby. Kay is a sad little Kay at the moment. She has quarrelled with Donald. He is lazy and he criticizes Kay's family all the time. He has said quite bad things about me. She is so unhappy. But I am telling her to stay here with Baby. Donald is no good to her, Gerald, and she must leave him.'

  'For heaven's sake, Inge, do take care what you're doing,' Gerald shouted down the mouthpiece. 'It's probably only a temporary quarrel. Things have been said that they'll be sorry for. But she's got the baby and all her life to think of. It's nothing to do with us after all.'

  'Oh, it is!' Inge cried. 'You don't know what cruel things he said about me. And then he made that foolish speech when I had got him such a good job with Robin.' There was a pause, then she went on, 'It is a pity, I think, that Marie Hélène did not invite me to her party. Many things were said then by you and by Robin that made Donald very bitter. And after all he is an orphan. I should have understood better. But now it is too late. Kay must leave him and come to live with me here. I shall be quite happy to have her. I love the baby.'

  Gerald was seized with horrified panic. 'Look,' he cried, 'I'll come down and discuss it with you both.'

  'No. Don't come down,' Inge said. 'That is not at all necessary. We do not need you.' Nevertheless Gerald drove down the next morning.

  The late September sun shone fitfully and a high gale was whirling the dead leaves down the gravel drive. The air was very cold. Inge swathed in scarves and woollies was wheeling John in his chair. Beside her walked Kay in a sensible woollen costume, her hair blowing across her face. She was pushing Baby in a pram. It might be the Park, Gerald thought.

  'Oh, there is Papa come to see us,' Inge cried. 'We are walking outside, Gerald, so happy in the sun.' It was clear that she was going to ignore the cause of his visit.

  Gerald d
ecided to go straight to the issue. 'What's all this, Kay,' he asked, 'about your leaving Donald? Do think very carefully about what you're doing.'

  'I'm quite capable of making up my own mind, thank you,' she said.

  'Are you?' Gerald asked. 'I don't believe you have a mind of your own when your mother's around.'

  Inge held her blonde head high, her blue eyes ahead of her. She kept them walking up and down the drive in the high wind throughout the interview.

  'Oh Lord!' John said. 'Can't you go anywhere without making scenes, Father? You ought to see a doctor, you know.'

  'This has nothing to do with you, John,' Gerald said. 'I've got things against Donald, Kay, as you well know. It isn't the marriage I'd have chosen for you. But he's fond of you; he's in a difficult position, you've got the baby, you can't just walk out on him because he doesn't get on with your family. It's ridiculous.'

  'He's taken the family money all the time,' Kay said.

  'Oh, that!' Gerald cried. 'That isn't important in a thing like this. Nor anything he may have said about any of us,' and he looked at Inge, but she stared ahead.

  'I'm afraid I think it's very important that Donald should so completely have failed to understand Mummy.' She implied that understanding Inge's faults as the child-like complement of her great virtues was the final test of human worth. She implied also that Gerald, like Donald, had failed to pass it.

  'Oh, don't be such a childish little fool!' Gerald cried in exasperation. 'You don't have to be a priggish head-girl all your life. This is your husband whom you love that you're talking about, not somebody who's let the school side down.'

  From the mountain air high above their petty human passion, Inge turned the scorn of Brunhild upon him. 'How can you say such things to little Kay when she is so unhappy? Poor little Kay with her poor little hand!' Even in her most immortal moments, Inge could not avoid her impulse to speak of Kay's hand.

  It was an unfortunate impulse at that moment. Gerald suddenly felt himself shaking with rage. He turned and shouted at her so that Kay and John jumped with the shock. 'Shut up, you mad woman,' he cried. 'How dare you talk about Kay at all? You came near to ruining her life once. Don't you dare touch her again. Do you hear? Don't you dare!'

  Inge's eyes rounded with fright. 'Don't let him speak of me like that. I can't bear it. I don't want to hear these things.'

  'There's a great deal you don't want to hear,' Gerald cried. 'You never have. All your life you've got away with it. But not because anyone loves you, but because they're sorry for you, do you hear! sorry for you. God knows if you've ever been sorry for what you've done.'

  'Stop talking like that to her,' Kay said. 'You've done nothing for us. She did everything.'

  'Yes, everything,' Gerald said. 'Ask her what she did to your hand.'

  'I did nothing, nothing,' Inge cried. She was weeping now, her huge form shaking.

  Gerald felt none of the horror or pity of former days, only anger. 'Then tell me how it happened,' he said.

  Through her tears, Inge began to stutter. 'You must not think these dreadful things. You have always thought cruel things of me. It was not my fault, Kay, it was not. But you were always touching Baby. And he was so sweet a baby, my Johnnie. And I was tired. I had no servants. I was always working.'

  'Whose fault was that?' Gerald said.

  Inge gave no answer. She went on mumbling now. 'I was so alone. I knew nobody. I tried to be friends, but they were difficult, the English people. And so you pulled at Baby and I pushed you and you fell with your hand in the fire. I didn't mean it. Please,' she said, 'I was only angry for my sweet little baby.'

  John said, 'Oh! my God!'

  But Kay put her arm round Inge's waist. 'That's all right, darling,' she said, 'you mustn't worry about it. I guessed something of the kind. You mustn't worry.' She turned to Gerald, 'You gave us no reason to love you, yet you've always been jealous of our loving Mummy. You should be ashamed to treat her like this.'

  John said, 'For God's sake, get out. You're not wanted here.'

  'You think,' Kay cried, 'that we don't know her faults. It's because we do that we love her. It's that that gives us a right to speak.'

  Inge's convulsive sobbing quietened down. She turned a smile upon them. 'Don't be unkind to your father,' she said. 'He is unhappy and bitter. Don't be bitter, Gerald. Things have gone badly for you, my dear. You have failed. But we all have failed in different ways. It is the autumn time in the year and in your life. But you must not be sad. You must open out to the changes. ...'

  Gerald looked at her, then he turned on his heel and walked towards the house, where Larwood waited in the car outside the porch. He looked round at them once. Kay's face was set and bitter. John's eyes were full of hatred. Inge smiled a smile of sweet pathos.

  He got into the car. 'We'll go straight back,' he said to Larwood, and they drove away past the pram and the wheelchair. He put his head back on the seat and twisted his fingers to prevent himself from crying.

  He set himself to the task of going through Professor Stokesay's papers that evening. He dined off an omelette and some Stilton cheese on a tray, and gave himself two strong whiskies and soda. There were two letters from Canon Portway. Mrs Cressett had been telling the truth: both Canon Portway and Professor Stokesay knew of the fraud.

  In his last letter Canon Portway had written:

  I can only hope that Gilbert was not sane when he played this dreadful joke and I pray for him. It is terrible to feel that all these years we have been so cruelly deceived. Whether, if I had been in your place, I should have destroyed his letter I do not know. You ask me what first gave me the suspicion which I voiced in my letter to you: that I fear I cannot tell you. But let me assure you if it is any comfort that I too have suffered over it. However, now that you have destroyed your son's letter, I must agree with you that we have to regard only the wider issues. Melpham is and will remain a freak, and as such it is not of vital historical importance. To tell the truth would inevitably, human nature being what it is, invite doubt and distrust of so much other work, particularly of the vital local antiquarian work which I have always championed. This doubt would certainly spread out in ever-widening ripples until much genuine work of importance would be in jeopardy from scepticism. Beside this, the erroneous story of Eorpwald's apostasy seems small evil. Nevertheless, I lay great store by your suggestion that whoever of us survives the other should commit the story to paper to be placed at his bank with instructions that it should not be opened for one hundred years. By that time the distorting issues of personality will have disappeared and the wicked joke will be seen in its true perspective without damage to other historical knowledge. For the rest we can only pray that we have acted rightly.

  Professor Stokesay, of course, had been the survivor. Gerald made inquiries at his bank, but there were no documents. Perhaps he had left Portway's letters undestroyed as a substitute. It seemed unlikely, but it was more charitable to think so.

  With so much of the story pierced together, Gerald felt at liberty to communicate with Sir Edgar. It was agreed that he should present his report to the committee of the Association, to which would be invited for the occasion Cuspatt of the Museum, and Pforzheim. Sir Edgar agreed reluctantly that Gerald should put another matter before the committee on the same occasion. The meeting was fixed for 9 October.

  At the same time Gerald wrote to Dollie to tell her of his discovery. The presentation of the report to his fellow historians would be an unpleasant task; it would help him so much, he said, if she would come up and stay at the flat that night. She was the only person to whom his personal feelings about the Stokesays would be intelligible: besides, it might be that the committee would require a short deposition from her, though he had to add, for truth's sake, that this was not very probable.

  Sir Edgar arrived at the Association headquarters in St James's Square in an irritable mood. It served him right, he thought, to be saddled with this unpleasant business when he was chairman
. He should have given up the office years ago. The truth was that without that interest he would die. It was no superstition, simply a matter of fact. Not that he minded dying, he reflected. He hoped he was as prepared for that as most men; but not to take every precaution to keep alive seemed to him a weak sort of way of going on. It's going to be damned difficult, he thought, to go about this business in a decent manner. The only bit of proof we've got is Portway's letter to Stokesay; it means we can't save their reputations. If only he could really rely on the men who would be at the meeting, but he couldn't. That was another reason why he couldn't resign. Clun was an impossible bounder; Lavenham an R.C.; Cuspatt was all right, but in the last resort these Museum fellows were as much bureaucrats as they were scholars - tied by a lot of red tape. Pforzheim was a nice Hun, if there was such a thing. The only young fellow they'd got in was Stringwell-Anderson, a funny sort of chap - a vulgar sort of dandy, really. As for Rose Lorimer, he dreaded to think what was going to happen there. Middleton, of course, he'd always relied on, but he'd never quite made the grade. Perfectly right, of course, to follow the thing through, but there'd been a sort of over-finicking, high-strung, personal conscience approach about it that didn't do at all. More like a Dissenter than a gentleman. But, of course, he probably came from Quaker stock or something like that. These rich trades-people. Well, they'd have to see. But you couldn't rely on any of them to have the right instinct.

  Professor Clun was already waiting in the committee-room when Sir Edgar arrived.

  'You're damned early,' Sir Edgar said. 'Oughtn't to be here before the chairman, you know.' He hardly made a joke of it. 'Still I suppose I must expect people to be in front of me these days. I can only just hobble, with this rheumatism.'

  'This has been a terrible business for Middleton,' Professor Clun said. Sir Edgar grunted, he did not trust Clun's sympathy towards Gerald. He thought to himself, I hope Clun isn't going to start getting sanctimonious. The fellow only has one virtue - his bluntness. He'll be ghastly if he loses that.