A Difficult Young Man

by Martin Boyd

  ‘Mum, I don’t want to go back.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked sharply, thinking that this inability of Dominic’s to stay anywhere was beyond a joke, as indeed it was.

  ‘They all hate me,’ he said.

  ‘You must imagine it. They can’t all hate you. Why should they hate you?’

  ‘They do. Because of my voice. They call me Looney Langton.’

  ‘They may mean it kindly,’ said Laura, but without conviction.

  ‘They don’t. They try to imitate me. It sounds horrible.’

  ‘I suppose it does.’ Laura smiled in spite of herself, at the idea of the Australian farmers’ sons trying to imitate Dominic’s quite unconscious ‘English’ voice, partly inherited, strengthened at Waterpark in his childhood, and further adorned with some of the expressions of the nineteenth-century military dandy, which he had caught from grandfather Byngham.

  ‘They can’t hate you if they imitate you,’ Laura went on. ‘They only think you’re funny. They’ll soon get used to you. People like those who amuse them.’

  ‘I can’t go back,’ exclaimed Dominic. ‘They held me down on my bed and blew smoke into my lungs. They did beastly things. I had to run the gauntlet. Look!’ He took off his jacket, pulled up his shirt, and showed great purple weals across his back. ‘And now grannie’s dead!’ he cried, and suddenly, the second of the three occasions on which I shall record them, he burst into those deep and racking sobs. He did not sob because of any physical injury he might have suffered, but because he had thought that when he went to the college he was leaving behind all the mistakes which had afflicted his life so far, and he expected at last to find companionship with young men of his own kind. He sobbed because again he found, as on the road on Mount Wellington, that the generous impulses of his heart were unwanted or disastrous. It may here be suggested that all Dominic needed was a psychologist. I can only reply that unless the psychologist had a profound sense of religious mystery, and a mediaeval sense of personal honour, Dominic, perhaps not unjustly, would have regarded him as some kind of moron, and if the man had spoken to him about sex he would have punched his nose.

  Laura could not speak. She was afraid to give way to her impulse to comfort him lest she should be caught in his storm of grief. She was horrified, and having her share of Irish superstition she began to feel there really must be a curse on Dominic, as though he brought many of his troubles on himself, others came upon him from outside. He could have done nothing to provoke this brutality except to be himself, different from the herd. She waited until he had composed himself a little, and blown his nose and dried his eyes, and then she went to fetch Steven, who, already tired from the nervous strain of the funeral, had to brace himself to cope with this enduring trouble, like a man who has just been seriously wounded and then is attacked by intermittent toothache. He questioned Dominic, who answered in a quite calm and factual manner, about the school, and when he heard what he had to say, announced definitely, ‘There is no question of your going back there.’ But he had no idea what he could do with him. If Steven believed a thing was wrong in itself he would never tolerate it, whatever inconvenience might ensue from his refusal.

  After tea I was sent back to my school at Kew, and Brian returned to the Melbourne Grammar School. Our parents went back with Dominic to Westhill, but only for two or three nights, as Steven was the principal executor, and found it more convenient to live at Beaumanoir to supervise the division of the spoils, a task that needed unlimited patience and tact. The family when they heard that Dominic was at Westhill knew that again ‘something had happened.’ They were rather too busy seeing that they got their fair share of Alice’s possessions to give this much attention, but Uncle Bertie attacked Steven about it. He said that he would never ‘make a man’ of Dominic if he allowed him to run away from every place he did not like. Young men were naturally rough. Steven replied:

  ‘A large part of the human race is disgusting. I intend to keep my sons in the civilized part if possible.’

  ‘They’ll do no good if you pamper them,’ said Uncle Bertie, and added that Dominic should learn to take it, or whatever was the equivalent of ‘take it’ in those days. But one of Steven’s convictions was that no one should ‘take’ what was brutal or unjust. He would have thought ‘we can take it’ a contemptible slogan, especially if invented by those who were not taking it for those who were. Uncle Bertie was disgusted by his attitude, and went about saying that Steven would ruin his sons, because he had none of the mushy sentimentality of the bully, and the only thing he ‘took’ was an added weight of responsibility towards Dominic. It is hard to say whether his attempt to relate his treatment of us to standards of humanity and justice has been as disastrous as Uncle Bertie prophesied.

  Bertie and Baba were the centre of the opposition to Dominic, those who thought something should be done about him. Bertie, although he was far above Baba in thought and deed, was friendly with her because he thought she had that common sense so lacking in the family. They were like patches of strong tweed on a piece of beautiful but tarnished brocade, and when they gave a tug at it, expecting it to fulfil their tweedy notions of the function of all fabric, the old silk tore and came apart. So strong was the weakness of the Langtons that when they married into a robust bourgeois stock, the children were all Langtons in their quick intelligence, their shallow wit, and their tenderness of heart, which meant that there was trouble in store for Uncle Bertie.

  For the time being Dominic stayed up at Westhill, where Sarah also had been sent, as she was tired from the strain of having to run Beaumanoir during Alice’s death and funeral, and also she was very irritable at the present confusion, when the place was no longer under her control, and she quarrelled with the aunts, who were now laying their covetous hands on those treasures, for touching which she had smacked them as children.

  The lawyer’s clerk, writing to inform Diana of the amount of her future income, had left a nought off the end, so that just as she expected to be released from her poverty, she thought she would henceforth have to live on a sixth of her former allowance, which would have been impossible. This gave her such a shock that she became prostrate for two days, and sent all her children off to stay with relatives. She sent Daisy, a nice sentimental little girl of fourteen, to Westhill, where Dominic was alone with Sarah. When she found that the clerk had made a mistake and she would after all have the income she had expected, she left her there as it was convenient.

  The family were too obsessed with loot to worry much whether this was a suitable arrangement. In their indignation that Baba had managed to secure ‘Mama’s writing desk’ they did not give much thought to Dominic. On Alice’s death Baba showed her claws. She treated Diana and Mildy as if they were dismissed servants and had no right to anything. When she tricked them out of the writing desk which, although a fine piece of furniture, they valued for its associations, she justified herself by saying it would be unsuitable in their humble homes. Steven had the largest share, and George twice as much as his sisters, though as the money came from Alice, if the usual practice had been followed, it would have all gone to the girls. However, Baba thought a doubled income gave her perfect authority to be rude. In the new rich society which she cultivated her attitude was respected, as rapacity and blatant push were the qualities on which its own success depended. Desmond McCarthy once said that good society was an association of people to give each other pleasure, while second-rate society was competitive. Baba would have been bewildered by this. To her parties were not for fun, and friends for love and pleasure, but means of gratifying her ambition. At any rate she never appeared to make a friend who was not rich or smart, or in some way useful to her.

  Up at Westhill Dominic was for a while at peace with himself. It was the autumn, in those parts an even lovelier time of year than the spring. The voice of a woman calling from one of the little farms on the hilltops, to her son work
ing down in the paddock, has a bell-like sound in the clear air, and the mountains towards Lilydale and Gippsland are as serene as those in the background of a painting by Giorgione. The smoke of the gum logs, rising in a thin blue line from the chimneys, scents the whole countryside, as Provence in the winter smells of burning pinewood. Daisy, with her round-eyed worship of her handsome and wicked cousin, who however treated her with that extreme gentleness, combined with a touch of priggishness as he corrected her seat on a pony, which Dominic so often showed to children, was the most soothing companion he could have. She restored his self-respect and his innocence.

  In the meantime the dividing up proceeded at Beaumanoir. Baba was annoyed that Steven, the eldest son, had all the traditional family possessions, the portraits and the furniture from Waterpark. The furniture at Westhill, except for these heirlooms, could legally have been divided, but the family though greedy were not inhuman, and were content to leave it there rather than remove the beds on which we slept. But Baba had seen there what she thought was valuable furniture, and came up with the intention of acquiring some of it. She made this reconnaisance on her own, without warning anyone. It so happened that the only good furniture at Westhill, including the portrait of the duque de Teba, had come to Laura from our grandmother Byngham. Baba arrived one afternoon when only Sarah was at home. She went round making a mental inventory, and in her bossy manner asked Sarah why these things had not been sent down to Beaumanoir to be divided up or sold, and implied that Steven was cheating his brothers and sisters.

  Sarah with lively vituperation, which Baba thought an outrage from someone with no money, explained that all this furniture was Byngham and not Langton property, and made Baba look a fool. At that moment Dominic came in with Daisy. They had been out riding and picnicking since breakfast time. Perhaps because the intensity of his feeling when he was angry exhausted it, he never bore malice. Just as before he had reproved Baba, he now reproved Sarah for speaking to her in that tone, and turning to her with every sign of affectionate welcome, invited her to stay the night. This infuriated her, that anyone should think she needed protection from the contemptible Sarah, especially by the more contemptible Dominic. She snorted and left the house, having first learned that Dominic was spending the whole of every day riding round the countryside alone with Daisy.

  As soon as she returned to Melbourne she rang up Diana, and said that if she did not want Daisy to have the same experience as her maids, she had better remove her at once from Westhill, where that fool Sarah was practically throwing her into Dominic’s arms.

  Diana did not know whether to dramatize the situation and rush off at once by the night train to save her daughter, or whether to dismiss Baba’s warning as a piece of bourgeois stupidity. Her life was directed by whims and suggestions which were an impalpable cushion between herself and any reality in which they might have originated. She did not really believe that Daisy was in any moral danger from Dominic, but decided to pretend she did as it would be an excuse for herself and Wolfie to spend two or three days at Westhill. She would not save her daughter from ruin until the following day as there was a chicken for dinner. Then as they missed the midday train, they did not arrive until the late afternoon. The Langtons were very fond of their children, and like the sacred pelican, frequently bled themselves on their behalf, though with Diana this bleeding was purely emotional. As they drove from Dandenong, quite forgetting the object of her journey, she was looking forward to being greeted with demonstrative affection by Daisy, but when they alighted from their hired wagonette at Westhill, the place appeared to be deserted, and Diana, deprived of her anticipated display of maternal emotion, was cross. When Sarah, returning from the farmyard with a basket of eggs, came round the corner of the house, Diana remembered why she had come, and demanded anxiously where was Daisy? Sarah said she was out riding with Dominic, and that they spent every day out riding together.

  ‘Are you a complete fool?’ exclaimed Diana. ‘After Baba’s maids.’

  Sarah went for her like an angry hen, but in the middle of the discussion Daisy and Dominic came up the drive, walking their horses for the last hundred yards, as we were made to do. When they saw the Flugels they rode up to them, instead of turning into the stable yard.

  ‘Hullo, mummy!’ cried Daisy, and she greeted Diana with all the affection she could require, and Dominic looked so cheerful and wholesome, that again Diana put Baba’s warning out of her head as sheer squalid nonsense. She took Daisy into the house, leaving Dominic with Wolfie, whom she had told to give him a serious talking to. Wolfie, being pompous, enjoyed the prospect, and was not going to be deprived of the pleasure of administering a rebuke by the fact, evident from Diana’s complete change of manner, that there was no occasion for it. He began by asking:

  ‘Why did you take my daughter into the forest?’ Although he had been twenty years in Australia, he still had a German accent, being so absorbed in his music that he could not give his full attention to the English language, and his conversation sounded rather like a Wagnerian libretto. He had anyhow a Teutonic heaviness of touch, and it is possible that with his poor command of English he used crude expressions which were wildly offensive to Dominic. If ever the latter had felt that he was a harmless member of society, it was during these few weeks at Westhill. Wolfie’s insinuations were revolting to him. All his sense of responsibility and his ideas of chivalry would have made it impossible for him to treat with anything but the greatest delicacy a young girl placed in his charge, though they might not keep him from the rollicking invitations of farm girls. These ideas are old-fashioned but they were prevalent at the time. When he gathered from Wolfie what people thought of him, his soul was eclipsed by its blackest emanations. Wolfie seeing Dominic droop before his eyes, looking no doubt as he did as we drove back from Alice’s funeral, was very pleased with his powers of rebuke, and went in to Diana and said with satisfaction:

  ‘I have spoken to him.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all nonsense,’ said Diana carelessly. Then she heard a sound of galloping, and through the window she saw Dominic on Tamburlaine tearing off down the drive, and my pony which Daisy had been riding, and which she had asked him to take round to the stables, running loose on the croquet lawn.

  ‘What’s Dominic doing?’ she asked sharply. ‘He’s let the pony loose. It’s marking the lawn. Wolfie, go and take it round to the stable.’

  ‘I do not like horses,’ said Wolfie.

  Diana shrugged her shoulders, and went out and caught the pony. Tom Schmidt was in the stable yard and she asked him where Dominic had gone.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Von,’ said Tom, using the name the local people gave Diana behind her back, and sometimes in careless moments to her face. ‘He was leading Cortez round when suddenly he let him go, and dashed off as if something had bit him. I seen his face and he looked terrible like. Tamburlaine didn’t ought to be taken out again today neither, and it’ll soon be dark.’

  ‘You must go after him and bring him back,’ said Diana. She was certain that Wolfie’s ‘talk’ had caused this sudden flight, and that if Dominic, as was most likely, did something unpredictable, there would be tiresome family rows.

  ‘I can’t do that, Mrs Von,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t know which way he’s gone. There’s not a horse here that could catch up with Tamburlaine. He’ll come back when he’s worked the demons out of himself. But he didn’t ought to have taken Tamburlaine out again. Tamburlaine’s a nice kind horse and ought to be treated proper.’

  Supper was an unpleasant meal. Diana, whose idiocies were all extraneous, and who when she really thought that something unfortunate had happened could give it serious attention, was listening all the time for Dominic’s return. Sarah was annoyed with the Flugels for descending on her without warning, and had seen to it that the food was nastier than usual. Diana had scolded Wolfie for speaking tactlessly to Dominic, and from this Sarah learned that he was re
sponsible and she nagged at them both all through the meal, although Wolfie said: ‘It is good for women to be silent.’ The light from the kerosene lamp shone down on the skeletons of the tinned herrings they had eaten, and when Maggie came in to remove them, and to put a watery blancmange and some stewed cherry-plums on the table, Diana exclaimed: ‘Oh, God, I can’t stand this!’ and went out on to the lawn, and stood in the silent night, listening. At Westhill there was always the shadow of Bobby, thrown and killed at the door, which made its presence felt when any of the children were late out riding. It was absolutely forbidden to any of us to ride after dark, and if one of us had ridden our pony into the flagged hall, as used to be done in our parents’ youth, there would have been as much superstitious horror, as if in some old castle the raven croaked which foretold the death of the heir. It was near this door that Diana now stood. She was both anxious about Dominic and worried about the blame which would fall on Wolfie if anything had happened to him. No one would think it pardonable to install your daughter in someone else’s house—and since Alice’s death Westhill had become the exclusive property of Steven—and then arrive uninvited yourself, accuse your host’s son of seducing her and drive him to some reckless and possibly disastrous action. The situation was too serious to fuss now about Sarah’s recriminations, or who was to blame.

  She went back into the house, into the drawing-room where she could hear Wolfie playing ‘Forest Murmurs.’ Sarah was standing by the mantelpiece fidgeting with the ornaments and muttering to herself.

  ‘Wolfie! Do stop that noise,’ said Diana irritably.

  Wolfie was astounded. ‘You call my music noise?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you understand,’ asked Diana with controlled exasperation, ‘that Dominic may be dead by now?’

  ‘And you will have killed him!’ said Sarah viciously. ‘You are wicked people. It’s the judgment of God. He took Bobby to warn you. Now He’s taken Dominic. Why don’t you get on a horse and go and look for him, and take some of the fat off you?’ she shouted at Wolfie.