The Dark Gateway

by John Burke

  “It’s a small world,” said Mr. Jonathan, with an important little cough.

  He obviously wanted their attention for what he had to say.

  “I made some surprising discoveries when I was down here last time,” he went on, turning around to face the room. He looked about, at the clock with its pendulum doggedly nodding from side to side in its glass case, at the calendar advertising cattle cake, and at the hooks in the beams of the ceiling. “I didn’t like to say anything until I’d been back to Liverpool and made sure that it all fitted. It seemed too good to be true, after all these years—centuries, rather. But it’s true. No mistake about it. I always like to be sure of my facts: I’m a careful man.” He beamed. “This”—his voice rose and he waved his hand, with its bitten nails, all-embracingly—“was the home of my family. Long time ago, of course.”

  Nora and her mother stared at him. The fire glowed behind him, flickering redly behind his drab, saturnine figure.

  “The people who had it before us,” said Mrs. Morris, vaguely, “were the Mountjoys. I don’t know who there was before them.”

  “It was a long time ago,” said Mr. Jonathan. “Long before this house itself was here. We’re an old family, you know—very old. Came from the Continent. It’s all in the books you’ve got in the other room. I was delighted to find them…oh, yes, delighted. Our ancestral home—our entrance to Britain. A gateway, as it were.” And he smiled to himself as though hugging some strange secret.

  “In the books?” said Nora.

  “Our whole history is there.”

  “But I didn’t think any of them dealt with family history of any sort.”

  “The history of what came before history was written,” he murmured, so that she could hardly hear him.

  He was trying to sound important, she decided. She had met them before, these little clerks who talked big when they came to the country, as though being a city dweller gave them some superiority over farmers and the like.

  Mr. Jonathan got up from his chair. “I’m dry now,” he said. “Perhaps I could have another glance at the books, if you don’t mind? Checking up, and so on. Mustn’t make any mistakes.”

  “Welcome,” said Mrs. Morris, who had been listening with only half an ear. “But it’s cold in there. We could light a fire,” she added doubtfully.

  “Quite understand,” said Mr. Jonathan. “Fuel shortage.… No, I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s very kind of you to have me at all. I just want to look at a few odds and ends—won’t stay long. Too freezing for the fingers, eh?”

  His trousers were wrinkled and twisted, stiff where they had dried. When he went towards the door and out into the passage, he moved eagerly, like a traveller nearing his goal.

  They watched him go. Mrs. Morris said: “Still, he’s not as funny as that old minister we had for weekends all that summer. Drawing pictures he was in a book out on the lawn, and what pictures they were. Do you remember him, Nora?”

  “Yes, mother,” said Nora automatically, her eyes still on the door. “I remember.”

  She heard her father splashing across the yard.

  “And to think he’s only come to look at those old books!” said her mother with her little explosive hiccough of a laugh. “They’re all the same.”

  Mr. Morris was stamping his feet on the thickly-encrusted step. Nora waited, pervaded by a sort of jeering resignation. She knew how the latch would crash as her father put his hand on it, how the coats on the back of the door would mutter as the door opened, and already in her ears, like an echo that has come too soon, even before the sound has been made, she could hear the grinding noise as the woodwork met the uneven tiles. This is serious, she thought. When little things like that get on your nerves.…

  The door opened and jarred to a halt as it met the raised tiles. If only things weren’t so much the same, day after day; if only something unusual, unexpected would happen.

  “Might as well give up,” said her father with a bland smile.

  He did not say what he was proposing to give up. He clumped his routine three paces across the room, pulled his chair forward so that the legs snarled along the floor, and sank down with a gusty sigh.

  “That’ll be all for now,” he said. “And if it gets any worse”—he favoured his daughter with a prodigious wink—“I won’t be able to get down to chapel tomorrow. A great pity it will be, but they will not be able to say it’s my fault, is it?”

  Mrs. Morris came to help him pull off his boots. It took a lot of energy for him to do it, nowadays, and made him very red in the face. There were times when the phenomenon of getting old puzzled him, and he would hold his hand up before his face as though to read in his palm the answer to the questions that were, perhaps, beginning to worry him. Sometimes that hand trembled when he held anything—his razor, for instance: Nora noticed that he did not shave so often as he had done in the past. No one said a word about it, but often her eyes were drawn to the fine silver stubble that gleamed around his chin and up to his ears. He had been several years older than his wife when he had married her, and it irked him now that she should be able to get about so briskly while he felt his vitality ebbing away. Living on the land for the space of a lifetime, giving it all the strength he had, and now feeling that strength gradually seeping away.…

  Nora went out of the room, snatching up a duster as she went. Her father and mother began to talk together. She was sure they had nothing new to say, but the buzz of their voices followed her along the passage.

  She could hear Jonathan’s dry cough from the parlour. It was a fidgety, throaty cough. She knew that when she reached the door she was going to turn into the parlour. You didn’t do any dusting on a Saturday afternoon, but carrying a duster made things look better. There would always be an excuse to hand when she went in.

  It was already becoming dark. As she entered she said: “Goodness, it’s black in here. Don’t you need a lamp?”

  For a moment her voice did not reach him. His head was bowed over a book that he held open, resting on his two hands. She stopped by the door until he looked up slowly, like a preacher about to deliver a text. His eyes were burning with a far, remote passion, but he spoke flatly, without interest.

  “Thank you, no.”

  He closed the book and slipped it back on the shelf, allowing his fingers to rest on it for a second when it had been replaced.

  “Are these books very valuable, do you think, Mr. Jonathan?” she asked suddenly.

  “Valuable?” he said, his voice regaining its normal fussiness. “My dear young lady—oh, indeed, yes. Very valuable.”

  “How much?” she said bluntly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How much do you think they’re worth?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t say how much. Really, I have no idea.”

  “But if you think they’re valuable—”

  “I have no idea of their value in terms of money.”

  He came forward, passing her, and going back towards the kitchen. She could hear the clatter of plates and knew that her mother was getting tea ready. The cold began to tingle at her finger-ends. It was everywhere, waiting for you, sharp, painful, ready to pounce as soon as you left the warmth of the fireside, this bitter cold. She could not stay away from the fire for long. She would have to go back. Soon her brother would come back from the afternoon he had been spending with a friend, and the kitchen would be crowded and noisy. It was a large room, and had once held a larger family than it did now, but noise seemed to ring back from the stone floor and everyone invariably wanted to move about at once. Nora would have liked to stay on in the parlour, just for the sake of being alone, but the discomfort would be too extreme. And the darkness made her uneasy. She had never been affected this way before. Darkness held no terrors as a rule; yet at the moment she became conscious of a sensation of brooding menace. If she had another nightmare tonight, she would have something to say to Simon.

  The lamp had been lit when she returned to the kitch
en. It glowed richly on the white cloth, the crockery, and the knives and spoons, but the corners of the room were huddled in sullen shadow. Mr. Morris still sat by the fire, his wife’s distorted shadow flickering across him as she moved to and fro. Where lamplight and firelight blended, the walls seemed hazy and unsettled, beating in and out with a wavering, unsteady pulse.

  Mr. Jonathan hovered indecisively at the far end of the table, seeing nowhere to sit down that was not in the path of the active, bustling Mrs. Morris.

  “Sit down, Mr. Jonathan,” said Mr. Morris gruffly, still looking into the fire. “Draw you a chair up to the fire.”

  “Thank you. I will, thank you.” Mr. Jonathan looked around, as though the selection of a suitable chair would be an important matter. Before he could come to any decision, Mrs. Morris, without halting on her way from cupboard to table, picked up a hardbacked chair with one hand and swept it towards the fire.

  Mr. Jonathan stared at it, then went and sat on it. He glanced at his host. Nora, cutting bread, watched him covertly. His mannerisms had slipped away for a moment, and he was just a nervous little clerk paying a weekend visit. She thought he was going to speak to her father, perhaps making some remark about “the crops,” hoping to win favour—as so many visitors did—but as she watched, a cunning gleam came into his eye, and that unaccountably self-satisfied expression returned to his features.

  “Here’s Denis,” said her father suddenly.

  “Pardon?” said Mr. Jonathan, starting violently.

  “Denis—my son.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I met Denis last time. Yes.”

  Nora heard her brother coming across the yard, and heard also that there was someone with him. She stood with her eyes on the door, holding the butter knife in mid-air as though to make a lunge with it. If Denis had met Simon and brought him home to tea.…

  The door opened.

  Denis had not brought Simon. He had brought his friend from Pen-y-bryn. They were both caked with snow down one side, and it looked as though they both had grey hair, though actually Denis had aggressively ginger hair, and his friend, shaking his head cheerfully, revealed a thick tangle of curly brown.

  And then Nora noticed Mr. Jonathan’s face. He was staring at the newcomers with unmistakable anger, gnawing agitatedly at his right thumbnail. For some reason he was furious that someone else should be here. Did he imagine that this weekend had been set aside especially for his visit? Nora felt a quite inexplicable, ridiculous surge of loyalty towards her family, and a mounting dislike of this silly little intruder. She supposed he wanted to prattle on about his connections with the house and his family history, with everyone hanging on his words. And if it was not that, why did he look so black?

  Denis said: “I hope you don’t mind, Mum—”

  “No, indeed, though I wonder how you ever got over on a day like this. Denis, I don’t think your sister knows…er—oh, dear me, it’s Fred—no, Frank, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, Mrs. Morris.”

  Denis slapped Nora on the shoulder with the odious familiarity that is characteristic of brothers.

  “This is our Nora,” he said. “Nora, this is Frank, another of the old Marine roughnecks.”

  “How do you do,” she said, very affably because of Jonathan’s scowl.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.

  Mrs. Morris said: “We always seem to get a full house at weekends, Mr. Jonathan.”

  “So I see,” said Jonathan. “Yes, so I see.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mr. Jonathan and Denis were seated side by side on the couch, facing Nora and Frank. Denis was quite at his ease, this being his usual place, but Jonathan, despite the assistance of two cushions, was far too low for comfort, and looked displeased. Frank and Denis were talking across the table about Sicily and Italy. Jonathan glowered at them—whether because he felt that he looked absurd or because he considered the story of his family as being more important, it was impossible to tell. The lamplight scored deep lines in his face.

  “Another slice of bread, Mr. Jonathan?” said Nora.

  “Ah…thank you.”

  “Help yourself to the jam. Denis—”

  Denis, without pausing in the middle of an anecdote about Naples, reached out with his left hand and skilfully manoeuvred the jam-pot around the sugar basin and along to his neighbour.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do help yourself, Mr. Jonathan,” said Mrs. Morris. “We’re used to helping ourselves, isn’t it? You mustn’t hang back, or there won’t be any left. More tea? That’s right.”

  “And there he was,” said Denis, “flat on the deck—absolutely chocker, I can tell you.”

  “Like a colour-sergeant I knew at Clacton, before we joined up with your mob,” said Frank.

  He spoke more quietly than Denis, but his words were well-chosen, and there was a pungency in his anecdotes that Nora found attractive, though she did not allow herself to show too much appreciation. She knew that Frank was glancing at her from the corner of his eye, and knew that he liked what he saw; she was used to that sort of glance, and did not intend to encourage it. At present she had enough trouble with Simon. Though Simon, she thought wryly, was not what you’d call ardent.

  Frank turned to her every now and then, trying to include her in his audience, and she nodded and smiled politely. He wanted to see her full-face, she knew. As he reached the end of his story—it was much better than the one Denis had told, which, like so many war reminiscences, had meaning only for those who were actually present when the incident occurred—she turned and watched him, frankly appraising him.

  He had a fresh, open face with a flattened nose that just escaped ugliness. His hair and eyes were dark brown—thoughtful, warmly appreciative eyes. He returned her gaze as he talked, without embarrassment. There was no trace of the local accent in his voice. When he had finished, Nora said:

  “Do you belong in this part of the world?”

  “My mother and father came here from Kent the year before the war. My mother was Welsh, but I was born in Kent. Someday I’ll go back there.” She noticed that he said, “I’ll go back there,” not merely, “I think I’ll go back there.”

  “You like it better than here?”

  “There’s something about it: it’s in my blood.”

  “Like malaria,” said Denis boisterously. “He gets regular attacks of it, too—his homesickness, I mean.”

  “Places are like that,” said Mr. Jonathan abruptly, breaking in so unexpectedly that even Mr. Morris, stirring his tea in his usual way, the spoon going unceasingly round and round as though he could not halt it, looked up. “They get hold of you,” said Jonathan. “Even across generations, you know. Something grips you…ancestral memories. I’ve met some people in my time—I belong to a society that—ah—brings together many such people.” He cleared his throat impressively. “People who could tell you things that would surprise you. Take the case of my own family now—”

  “Mr. Jonathan was telling us,” Mrs. Morris said to her husband from down the table, her lilting Welsh voice coming like a song after the visitor’s moist tones, “that his family owned this farm once—before the Mountjoys, that is. Of course, we didn’t know much about all those who came before the Mountjoys. Funny, isn’t it, how things happen? More tea, Mr. Jonathan?”

  “Thank you, no. Yes, we belong here. There are, of course, many branches of the original family, who were not all called Jonathan. They had another name in the old days, our family, and they were very important.” He favoured them with a sinister smile. “Fortunes change; families change; those who were once in power are superseded. But not forever. No, there are some old dynasties that cannot be trampled down for all time. The world needs those on whom it once relied. Rebirth: the world needs rebirth.”

  There was an embarrassed silence. “Here’s queer goings-on for you,” said Mrs. Morris silently along the table to her daughter.

  “The Mountjoys hadn’t been here
long,” said Mr. Morris remotely. He supped his tea. “Nice people. A pity for her when he passed over.”

  His irrelevance was welcome. His habit of starting to talk at random had averted many family disputes in the past. He was a man who liked peace in his household. “Funny ideas about the place, they had. The old woman—”

  “She was younger than I am,” said his wife eagerly, “and you, for that matter.”

  “Mrs. Mountjoy,” Mr. Morris went on imperturbably, “couldn’t abide the house. She couldn’t understand why the old man had wanted to start farming here at all. Said it was too lonely. She was English.” Perhaps he was being scornful; it was hard to say.

  “She told me how glad she was to be going when the old man died,” his wife confirmed. “Eerie, she said it was—but what would there be about this house, now? It suits us all right.”

  She looked proudly around the table. The Morris family had made a success of the farm; even during the war, with Denis away, they had carried on.

  “A place like this,” she said in defiance of some unknown critic, “needs a family, and a family that’s not afraid of hard work, mind.”

  “It does,” said Mr. Morris.

  Husband and wife did not look at one another, but for a moment the bond between them was almost a tangible thing. Frank glanced at Nora with an understanding, appreciative smile.