My Son, My Son

by Howard Spring

  We talked for a long time after Oliver had left us. Not one of them referred to what had happened. But there was in the manner of all of them an added solicitude, a deepening of the customary kindness, that was comforting.

  It was a warm night. We had all trooped up to Dermot’s study on the first floor, because thence we had a view over the Heath. The curtains were pushed right back across the open window, and we sat round the window in a semi-circle of chairs. Not a breath was stirring. The sky was a lucent green, full of light, but light thinned out to the last tenuity. The room was in darkness. Dermot was smoking a cigar, I a pipe, Maeve a cigarette. Eileen, who did not smoke, was sitting on a footstool with her head resting on Sheila’s lap. Sheila was knitting a garment for Rory.

  It is one of those clear pictures that the mind takes in and keeps for ever, unaltered through the ruin of years. I see it in every detail; the glowing points of cigar and cigarette, the clear green light of the sky over the Heath. I hear again the silence, emphasised for a long time by the click of Sheila’s needles, broken at last by Maeve saying in a low voice: “The longest day. From now on we go downhill.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” said Dermot, shattering with a laugh the solemnity that had come upon us. “I’d rather go for a holiday. What about you, Bill? Can’t we join forces at Heronwater this year? I’m ready to set off in a week’s time.”

  “My forces, I’m afraid, will be small,” I said. “But I’d like to come. There’s nothing to keep me in London at the moment. Perhaps Livia will come—at any rate when she’s finished the work she’s doing. She said that would be in the middle of July.”

  “‘We should still be there,” said Dermot. “I’m for making it a long holiday. I’d like to stay on well into August. What about you?”

  “That would be fine,” I said. I did not say what was in my mind: that as Livia and I were to be married in August, we could get married at the church of St. Just, buried in its pit of trees alongside the little lost creek. I should like Dermot and Sheila and Eileen to be there. But with Maeve in the room, her white face glimmering in the dark, her eyes fixed on the clear swim of light out over the Heath, I said nothing of that. “I’d like that,” I said.

  “I shall be glad when I can take a long holiday with you all again,” Maeve said, not drawing her glance back into the room. “How long ago it all seems, Bill dear, since Mary Latter came down to visit Captain Judas, and we saw the swans flying across the moon, and you launched me.” She got up. “I must go. I hate longest days. I hate endings and things that suggest endings to come.” We all got up. “Walk across Parliament Fields with me, Uncle Bill,” she invited. “I’ll get on to the tube at Hampstead station.”

  “I’ll get Martin to take you down in the car,” I offered.

  “I wouldn’t bother him. Let the man enjoy his Sabbath,” she said. “But walk across the fields with me. It’s on your way.”

  So I walked across the fields with Maeve. There were many people about in the warm evening, under the wonderful light which still pulsed thinly in the sky. “I shouldn’t feel tragic on such a night,” she said, “but I do. ‘From now on we go downhill.’ What a thing to say! What a daft, mad thing!”

  I saw her on to her train and walked slowly home. The Crown Prince who was heir to the Austrian throne was thinking that night of his forthcoming visit to the Province at Bosnia. He set out to keep his appointment two days later.

  *

  Livia promised to join us at Heronwater as soon as she was able. Probably in about three weeks’ time, she said. Dermot and Sheila, Eileen and I, travelled on Sunday, June 28th. Martin had gone on with my car a few days before, taking the luggage of both families—if you could call me a family. We travelled that Sunday in Dermot’s car, he driving. We took it easy, knocking off on any excuse—for mid-morning coffee, for lunch, for tea. There were not many cars on the roads in 1914; it was a lovely day; and we were all in the best of spirits. Ahead of me, things looked clearer than they had done for many a day. I felt that Oliver would be safer, working under Dermot’s eye. I told myself that before I came back this way again I should be married to Livia. I began to think of the work I should take up when she and I were settled down with the winter ahead of us.

  I was ready to be pleased with everything on that day of high June as we sped along the roads that had not yet been denuded of their country air, of their hedges and elms, their foxgloves, honeysuckle and meadowsweet. “What have we done to this chap, Sheila?” Dermot demanded. “I could almost take him for Bill Essex, that little Manchester snotty we used to know.”

  Sheila, sitting in the back of the car with me, her hat tied to her head with a veil knotted under her chin, for the hood was down, turned her smile upon me and said nothing. Sheila didn’t need to say anything. She was happy when those about her were happy, and she was happy now. Her grey eyes were deep with content. Her mouth was a sweet and lovely line. The hair that escaped in wisps from under her veil was grey, but she was a desirable woman still.

  The cathedral bells were calling to evening service as we threaded our way through Truro’s ugly streets. Half an hour later we were turning into the gravel drive, winding through the trees, catching the smell of the river we could not see. Dermot pulled up. “There!” he exclaimed proudly, dropping his hands from the wheel. “The slowest time ever made between Hampstead and Heronwater. That’s what I understand by motoring.”

  We clambered out of the car, and as we stood there stretching our legs on the gravel a wheeze of rusty music came drifting up from the river. I turned a questioning eye on Sam Sawle who had come out to greet us. “That’s Captain Judas, Mr. Essex,” he explained. “He’s been holding a service on deck every Sunday evening this summer. That’s his harmonium you can hear.”

  We all crowded to the balustrade and looked into the dense foliage that ran downwards. We could not see the Jezebel, but soon we heard the captain’s voice upraised, a thin reed of sound running with the harmonium’s wheeze:

  Praise ye the Lord, ‘tis good to raise

  Your hearts and voices in His praise.

  His nature and His works unite

  To make this duty our delight.

  “Donnelly would like that,” said Dermot. “He’d be down there singing.”

  “He do go through the whole thing proper,” Sawle said. “All the hymns and prayers, and a short address. And in the middle of the prayers he do shout his own ‘Halleluiahs!’ and ‘Praise be’s’ and then he reads the announcements and takes a collection from himself.”

  “And what announcements does he make?” I asked.

  “Always the same one, Mr. Essex. ‘The great and terrible day of the Lord is at hand. The date will be announced from this pulpit in the near future.’”

  We looked at one another without speaking as the singing came to an end and Judas’s voice rose and fell across the water, calling upon his God.

  “The poor man,” said Eileen quietly, and started towards the house. We all followed, somehow subdued.

  But we did not feel subdued in the morning. How good it was, after all the doubts and agonies I had endured during the past few months, to be standing there with Dermot in the utter simplicity of that morning hour! We stood on the edge of the landing-stage, looking at the water sliding and whispering by. There was still a trace of the night’s mist, but the sun was gaining strength, with promise of a long day of blazing heat. A heron flew high overhead, with slow, lazy strength, but there was no other living thing to be seen and none heard save the birds twittering in the woods. Nothing stirred on the black hulk of the Jezebel. The dinghy, the Maeve and the two sailing boats curtseyed on the sliding river.

  The moment was too perfect for speech. Without a word, Dermot and I slid into the water, swam round the boats, and then came ashore. A quarter of an hour later we joined Sheila and Eileen at breakfast. There was that marvellous fish a John Dory, which Sawle had somewhere procured, and a fine cold ham, with bread and butter and marmalade and ja
m and plenty of tea and coffee. Sawle had resolved on a good start for the holiday. I asked him if there was a newspaper in the house and he said that Martin had been in to Truro and had doubtless brought one back. Martin came in at that moment with the Western Morning News. Dermot brusquely snatched it from him. I didn’t bother. This was no time for newspapers, with Sheila handing me a cup of tea and Eileen piling John Dory upon my plate. Only when I had taken the edge off my hunger did I ask: “Well, what’s the world doing?”

  “Nothing that matters to us,” he said. “Getting ready for the week’s cricket and racing. Oh, and an Austrian grand duke was assassinated yesterday while we were so comfortably driving down here. At Sara—Sarajevo. Ever heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Put down the paper and get something into you,” said Sheila. “They’re always assassinating people in those places.”

  “Well,” said Dermot, tossing the paper across the room. “No news is good news.”

  *

  Livia joined us on Saturday, July 18th. That was the day Oliver’s holiday began. A week before this, Dermot had said to me: “There would be no harm in giving Oliver a chance to join us here. I don’t think it’s likely he’ll come, but anyway I shall write and tell him to take a fortnight’s holiday. What do you think?”

  I was anxious to try anything that offered a hope of coming to terms with Oliver. I asked Dermot to point out to him that Livia would be coming on the 18th, that there were two sailing dinghies longing for work, and that the weather was glorious. All this Dermot threw out as coming from himself.

  He received an answer from Oliver thanking him cordially for the holiday—“which really I don’t deserve after so short a service”—but saying nothing about Cornwall, nothing about his intentions in any way.

  “That seems to be that,” said Dermot ruefully.

  On the 18th I took the Maeve in to Falmouth to meet Livia. I might have sent the car to meet her at Truro, but I liked fussing about with the motor-boat, especially now that I no longer touched the wheel of a car. I was glad at any time to run over to Falmouth, to do shopping, to pick people up, or for any other purpose.

  Livia looked worn out. She explained it by saying she had been working too hard. She was glad it was all over. She had done all that Wertheim wanted of her. “And I’m not sorry to get away from him, either,” she said, lying back on the cushions as I manœuvred the boat away from the pier and made out for the open water of the harbour. She looked round at the sparkling blue of sea and sky, the green hills that sloped down to the sea, the gaiety of the multitudinous craft sailing and steaming about us. “Oh, it’s so peaceful,” she exclaimed, breathing deeply of the lively air. “You simply can’t believe in war with all this about you.”

  “War!” I exclaimed in surprise. “What on earth is there to go to war about?”

  “It’s Wertheim,” she said. “That’s what I meant about being glad to get away from him. I expect he’s mad.”

  “That man’s got war on the brain,” I soothed her. “As long ago as last January he was talking about it.”

  “Well, he says it’s here now—a matter of weeks.”

  I laughed, suddenly and loudly, out there on the wide water of Falmouth harbour, and at the sound Livia’s face cheered. She looked almost grateful for that quick spontaneous guffaw. “Thank you for that, Bill,” she said. “You’ve no idea how that man has got on my mind. It’s that business at Sarajevo—I expect you read about it in the papers.”

  “Yes, some grand duke or other.”

  “But remember,” she said swiftly, “he was the heir to the Austrian throne,” and in the way she had at once picked me up I sensed Wertheim’s tuition.

  “But, good Lord,” I exclaimed impatiently, “what have Austria and Serbia got to do with us?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know, and Wertheim was terribly convincing—with pepper-pots and salt-cellars and pieces of bread—you know, showing how the whole thing was going to work out. He says that Russia will simply have to back up Serbia, and Germany won’t have Russia butting in, and France will rear up as soon as Germany moves a man or a gun. I wanted to know what all that had to do with a chap being shot in Sarajevo, and he just looked pitying and said ‘Nothing, my dear Miss Vaynol, nothing at all. They’ve been ready for a long time, and what we heard at Sarajevo was only the starter’s pistol.’”

  I felt my face becoming as grim and drawn as Livia’s had been. Suddenly the sunlight seemed to dim. There was just a grain of possibility in this nonsense of Wertheim’s. I could imagine him sitting there with Livia, immense, impassive, convincingly demonstrating the end of the world with pieces of bread. “But dash it all!” I cried irritably, “what do other people think? What are they saying in London?”

  “Does it matter what they are saying in London?” Livia asked, suddenly contemptuous. “No, I’ve heard this only from Wertheim. Everybody else is playing about as usual.”

  We had shaken off most of the traffic, for now we were in the Carrick Roads, and I let the Maeve go all out. “Well,” I said, “war seems a long way from here, and until it’s a good deal nearer I refuse to talk about it.”

  Ahead of us a steamer was making her way on the rising tide up the river to Truro. “What flag’s that?” I asked Livia.

  “Danish.”

  Something familiar in the cut of the vessel teased my memory, and suddenly I remembered the night when Dermot and Donnelly had accompanied me and Captain Judas to Truro. Now we were near enough to verify the guess. Round the counter of the ship, which was heavily laden with timber, I read the name of the Kay of Copenhagen, and on the bridge I had a glimpse of the tall figure and sun-tanned Viking head of Captain Jansen.

  “I’ve met that chap before,” I exclaimed. “A friend of Captain Judas.”

  “And how is that poor old fool?” Livia asked without much interest.

  “Madder than ever. Announcing the coming of the great and terrible Day of the Lord.”

  “Like Wertheim.”

  “Give Wertheim a rest,” I said, almost savagely.

  At the head of the Carrick Roads we swung right, well ahead of the Kay. There was plenty of water in the river and very little traffic. The Maeve’s engine was in beautiful form. The richly wooded banks, broken occasionally by pasturage coming down to the water, swung past us. A heron or two flapped lazily away at our approach. All the lovely panorama of that most entrancing river unfolded itself, reach after reach; and speedily we were turning the last spit of land. I slowed down the engine, pointed the Maeve’s bow to the landing-stage, and saw that Dermot, Sheila and Eileen were all standing there, gazing across at the Jezebel. At the same moment I clearly heard the bell sound in the Jezebel’s living-room—the bell which I had myself persuaded Judas to install. A small motor-boat was alongside the black hull of the ship. A man sat at the engine which was boxed amidships, and a tall stripling stood up with his hand on the bell-pull. We were a good way off, but something familiar in that spruce upright figure started my heart beating quicker. I looked at Livia. Her face had gone white. “He must have been on my train,” she said tensely, “and he’s hired a boat to bring him on from Truro. He rang me up last night. He said he was going to do it but I thought he was fooling.”

  “But I’m glad,” I said, “glad to have him. We’ll all have a great holiday.”

  She looked at me wearily. “Will you? Oh, Bill, you fool! He hasn’t come to give you joy. He’s come so that his presence may taunt you. He’s not calling on Judas for fun. He’s going to stay with him.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Stay with Judas! With us on the other side of the water? It’s monstrous, impossible!”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t,” she said; and then savagely: “Why couldn’t he go somewhere else? Why the hell can’t he leave me in peace! I told him not to come.”

  She was trembling, her knuckles white as she clutched the gunwale. I had stopped the engine, and in the silence the
bell in the Jezebel clanged again. Oliver’s clear, unmistakable voice rang out over the water. “Judas! Ahoy there, Judas! Come on! It’s me—Oliver.”

  I picked up my glasses from a thwart and saw Judas appear and look over the rail. This was the first time I had set eyes on him that holiday. His always meagre face, which was all I could see, appeared to have shrunk. His cheeks seemed to have caved in, his head to be all wild white hair and whiskers. It was the face of a far-gone fanatic. I saw it light up when he caught sight of Oliver standing there in the boat, hailing him insolently. “Ho, there, old ’un! Don’t keep the Master waiting!”

  With trembling hands Judas lowered his ladder. “Coming, my Lord, coming,” he quavered.

  Oliver picked up a rucksack from the motor-boat, slung it on to his shoulders and climbed the ladder. The motor-boat started up and went back towards Truro. Oliver must have been well aware of the Maeve out in the river, of the little knot gathered on the Heronwater quay. He did not spare a glance for either. As soon as he was aboard, Judas pulled up the ladder, and they disappeared.

  The Maeve chugged slowly in to the landing-stage. Sheila and Eileen had disappeared. I felt that they had not wanted to see me in my discomfiture. But Dermot was still there, and under pretence of helping me ashore he wrung my hand hard.

  “The worst yet, Bill,” he muttered.

  I nodded, unable to speak; but worse was to come.

  *

  In the morning, before any of us were up, the Rory, which was Oliver’s boat, was shifted from her moorings on our side of the river and tied up under the shadow of the Jezebel.

  Dermot, who had walked down to the landing-stage with me, was livid with rage, and Sam Sawle, who had come up to the house to tell us what had happened, stood beside us, grave and concerned. He asked if he should row across in the dinghy and fetch her back. I pretended to consider this for a moment, then said: “No, the Rory’s his boat. He can do what he likes with it.”

  I turned on my heel and walked away, Dermot following. I could feel him fighting to keep back the words that were bursting to his lips. He did not succeed. “The bloody little whippersnapper...” he began.