He let the book fall on the bed and his eyes shifted to the window, to the far green bank and the sunlight spilling on the water. He seemed to forget us altogether; Mary took my arm and drew me out of the room. “Go up on deck,” she said. “I’ll bring you some coffee.”
She came presently and put the coffee down between us. “What a dreadful thing,” she said, “young Maeve O’Riorden dying like that. It must have been a ghastly shock to you. Oh, dear! I am glad to have someone to talk to, even about horrible events like that.”
“Tell me about your father,” I said. “He looks much frailer.”
It was the sort of story I should have expected. Even down here in this dreaming backwater of the world the madness and hysteria of the war had raged. The queer and incomprehensible became sinister and portentous. Judas’s innocent lights became signals—though to whom or what God alone might tell. No one living in those parts, save me and Dermot and the children, had ever been permitted to board the Jezebel; and the most fantastic rumours spread as to the devilries that were hatched there. It was a quiet harbourage for spies; it housed a printing-press whence sedition was propagated; a German submarine had come up the Carrick Roads and an officer, getting into a collapsible boat, had been rowed at dead of night to the Jezebel. There were those who saw this with their own eyes.
One night bucolic policemen went aboard, armed with a search warrant, and all old Judas’s pitiable secrets were laid bare and trampled beneath uncomprehending feet. His queer scrawls in Greek, because to the policemen they were meaningless, took on the meaning of codes and ciphers. Excited, they turned the neat ship upside down. As the old man, hauled from his bed, alternately whined and cursed, padding after them in a night-shirt, they found the way down to the bilge, heaved up his chest of writings, and gloated over that fantastic discovery. They could make nothing of it all, and that fed their deepest fears and suspicions, and Judas, feeling his very soul outraged as these harvests of his fantasy were pawed and pored upon, was at last hauled off to gaol till the whole suspicious farrago should be elucidated.
“Nothing came of it,” Mary Latter said tiredly, “except that he became—madder—than ever.”
She took him to London, and he lived with her all through the war. “And then he wanted to come back, so I let him. He’s quite happy here, you know, in his way, and well able to look after himself. This illness now is nothing to worry about—just influenza. He’ll be up and about soon. I’ll stay till he’s quite fit.”
“Did he get his papers back?” I asked.
“They all came back most neatly done up with sealing-wax and red tape after the war. But it was too late. He didn’t know what they were and burned them all. It was a pity, because it was all harmless enough. You see, it had given his mania an outlet for ten years and more. Then the continuity of the thing went, and now there’s nothing. Except your son.”
“My son!” Her words nearly startled me out of my seat.
“Yes,” she nodded. “He still believes... Well, I expect you know what he believes.”
“But he hasn’t seen Oliver since before the war.”
She looked at me curiously. “Oh, yes, he has.”
“But—when?”
“I wasn’t here at the time. It was just after I’d brought Father back. Your son must have been just demobilised. He came down here and stayed for a week. Father wrote me a most exulting letter and—borrowed some money for the first time in his life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry. I’m a rich woman.”
“Yes—but—that’s not the point.”
“Please forget about it,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You don’t know where—Oliver—is now?”
She shook her head. “I know that he writes to Father, but I’ve never seen any of his letters.”
I went down to say good-bye to Captain Judas, but he was asleep, his little face, framed by the white of hair and whiskers, sunk in the pillows, his two claws lying frailly on the counterpane.
*
We had not been long back from that holiday when I got news of Oliver’s whereabouts. It was a hot July night—no night for eating in town, Dermot said; so he took me off to Hampstead. I still had no car of my own, and Dermot insisted on driving me home. He came up to the flat to have a drink, and a few minutes later Annie Suthurst brought in a card: Captain Dennis Newbiggin, M.C. There was no address. “Show him in,” I said.
“I’ll be going then,” said Dermot.
“No, no; sit down a minute. I expect I’ll soon get rid of this chap.”
Captain Dennis Newbiggin wore brown suede shoes and a neat suit of navy-blue, with a double-breasted jacket and a regimental tie. His hat, which had somehow eluded Annie, was a grey felt with a spot of bright plumage fixed into the band. He held this in his left hand, and tucked under his left arm was a silver-headed malacca cane of unusual strength and weight. The head itself was heavy, and the whole thing had the appearance of a weapon—a knobkerry. The captain held out his right hand, from which the middle finger was missing.
I didn’t like the look of the fellow, though it was difficult to say what was wrong. He was a shade—well, flash. I shouldn’t have called him jannock. He looked fundamentally a tough; yet he tried to get away with pretty airs; a little toothbrush moustache, perhaps too much oil on his abundant, well-brushed dark hair. He looked about thirty.
I shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Essex,” he said.
“Sit down, Captain Newbiggin,” I invited him. “Still a captain?”
“Well, no. Been out of the old mob now, you know, for some months.”
“Ah! This is Mr. O’Riorden, Mr. Newbiggin.”
Dermot gave him a rather distant nod.
“You’ll have a drink?”
“Just my time for a gargle. No, no—please don’t drown it. Thank you.”
He tossed off the almost neat whisky and wiped his moustache with a handkerchief drawn from his left cuff.
I looked at him expectantly, and he took out a morocco-leather pocket wallet and extracted a card from it. This he handed to me. “I wondered if I could interest you in this little business, Mr. Essex.” He grinned. “It’s a bit short of capital.”
Dermot got up. “Perhaps I ought to be going.”
“I’d like you to stay,” I said, “if you can spare the time. This will interest you.”
I handed him the card:
NEWBIGGIN & ESSEX
MOTOR-CARS
NEW AND SECOND-HAND
DEANSGATE MANCHESTER
Dermot sat down and considered Mr. Newbiggin more carefully.
“The poor must live, you know, Mr. Essex,” Newbiggin said cheerfully. He took from his pocket a thin gold cigarette case and held it towards me and Dermot. We shook our heads. “D’you mind if I do?” He flicked a light from an ornate lighter, let the smoke ooze slowly through his nostrils, and said: “We stuck together, Oliver and I. We stuck it for a long time before we were both pipped at Arras in ’17. Then we had hell’s delight organising escapes from a German prison camp. But we never got away with that. All the same, we got away with some high old times together, one way and another. Paris leaves...” His eyes became meditative.
“And you’re still sticking together?” I prompted him.
“Well, we parted for a time. You know, back in the dear old homeland, after two years on the Western front, and the best part of another two lodging with old Fritz, and a bit of gratuity in our pockets... well, it wouldn’t be human, would it, Mr. Essex? Boys will be boys. As a student of human nature—I speak as one who’s read your books, Mr. Essex—you realise that?”
“Realise what?” I asked him coldly.
“Well, I mean, we decided to part company for a month or two and each shake a loose leg while the dibs lasted, and then get down together to a spot of work.”
“You mean you got through your gratuities and then tried to start a business, presumably on borro
wed capital?”
“That’s the size of it, sir; and believe me capital is damned hard to come by. We’re living pretty near the bone.”
There was some truculence in this last remark.
“Did my son ask you to make this call?”
“Well, not exactly, but I figured it this way. Here I am in the gay metrollops trying to raise a bit of money—and believe me it’s cost me a Savoy lunch and no end of drinks today to get nothing at all—and I say to myself ‘What about applying to the fountain-head?’ After all, a son’s a son, and a father’s a father.” There was silence for a moment before he added, gazing round the room, “You don’t look short of a bit.”
No one spoke and Newbiggin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His legs were stretched right out in front of him. I noticed that the sole of one of the natty suede shoes was worn nearly through, and that took my eye to his coat cuffs, always another symptom. The whiskers had been trimmed down neatly with scissors.
Poor devil, I thought. And yet he’s a scoundrel. I feel it in my bones.
“Well, anything doing?” he asked jauntily. “A couple of hundred would see us on velvet.”
“I won’t say No off-hand,” I said. “I’d like to communicate with Oliver, and perhaps with some accountant up there to give me a report on the business.”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Essex, do nothing of the sort,” he implored me, suddenly completely genuine. “Oliver’d blast the skin off my back. He’d walk his legs down to the knees before he’d ask you for a penny. Don’t say a word to him. He’d get in a hell of a temper, and I can’t handle him when he’s like that.”
“Then the idea was—?”
“To get a bit of capital and work it quietly into the company without saying where it came from. See the idea?” He added brightly, fingering his gay tie, “If you could see it like that?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, well...” He got up and held out his maimed hand.
“Another drink?”
“Righty-o. Just to show there’s no ill-feeling.”
He tossed it off, and I went out with him to the landing. “Not a word to Oliver, eh?” he said.
“All right.”
“Fact is,” he confided, “I was his batman. He’s bloody good to me.”
I shook his hand, slipping a pound note into it. He looked at it in astonishment. “Thank you, sir,” he said, with a sudden humility that made me feel sick. He raised his hat with the spot of gay plumage and went away.
“Well,” said Dermot, when I got back to the study. “That was pretty amateur.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose he would have liked it in pound notes. What would the odds have been on Oliver seeing it then?”
“Have another drink?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be going. Will you look Oliver up?”
“No. Well, not yet. I’ll see.”
*
“He’d walk his legs down to his knees.” So even Newbiggin knew that, the cheap little skate. I could imagine the scene: “Well, what about touching the old man for a bit? He’s got plenty.” And the wounds in Oliver’s face twitching, pulling up the side of his eye, pulling down the side of his mouth, as he told Newbiggin he’d blast the hide off him if he mentioned the old man again. This Oliver of whom I knew nothing, this man who had been scorched and twisted by war, changed into something whose anger the likes of Newbiggin did not care to face. He was removed from me as far as the East is from the West. I had had no commerce with him since those incredible days when he lounged through life in the company of Mr. Guy Boothby, his deepest longing being to possess a gold cigarette case and a book on the management of steam yachts. What could I do to bridge the gulf between that far-off puerile figure and the formidable man who now was Oliver? Nothing.
*
Ever since leaving Manchester I had continued to read the Manchester Guardian. It was towards the end of the following winter—in March of 1920—that I came upon a paragraph in that paper which threw the next beam of light upon Oliver’s affairs. It was a report of bankruptcy court proceedings, and the Official Receiver was frank about the affairs of Messrs. Newbiggin and Essex. Books, he said, had been improperly kept insofar as they could be said to have been kept at all, and the whole conduct of the business had shown a reckless disregard for customary commercial procedure. He was not sure that the condition of things disclosed did not merit the investigation of another court; but in view of the splendid military record of one of the partners he would give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that ignorance of business practice had led them to their present position. The inquiry was closed.
It was this which led me at last to visit Manchester. Perhaps now was the time...
I went one afternoon towards the end of March, travelling from St. Pancras by the route that goes switchbacking through the Pennine Chain. There was snow in the gullies of the high hills, and frequent water tumbling in white spates among the leafless woods. There were enfilade glimpses down the length of dale after dale, and I wondered why, with all this remote loveliness to choose from, men herded themselves in great cities. Perhaps this sort of thing would be welcome to Oliver now. Perhaps he had had enough of the lone and desperate hand and would be willing to rest, if only for a while, in some place like this, or at Heronwater. Then, when he was rehabilitated, when the stink of war was out of his life, we should see...
So I pondered as we roared along the valleys, and through the tunnels, and over the viaducts of that romantic land, and shot out at length on to the Cheshire plain and the thickening agglomerations of Manchester suburbs.
I took a room at the Midland Hotel, and when I had rested for a while I was taken in a taxicab to Didsbury. At the White Lion Hotel I dismissed the man and walked on down the Wilmslow Road. This was sentimentality. Well, so be it. I walked on down the Wilmslow Road.
I wanted to recapture, if I could, the Oliver I had known. Here was the house called the Priory, at the corner of Fog Lane, where, nearly a quarter of a century before, I had met Dermot wheeling a perambulator to meet the one I wheeled myself. The trees had been trailing green branches over the wall, and there for the first time Rory and Oliver had looked at one another, clasped one another’s hands, smiled in one another’s eyes. The sunny scene was extraordinarily clear to my imagination, though now it was not sunny, and the trees were not green, but clawed with skinny fingers, dewed with fog, in the light of a street lamp.
I had not paused; the memory had come back, rounded and complete, as I passed that spot and continued my walk along the road—that road between my house and Dermot’s—which held more of my youth than any place on earth. This way all the children had come to Miss Bussell’s—Miss Bussell who had so little understood what she was up against that day when Rory had lied to make trial of his courage. This way Maeve had run and danced, eager to reach The Beeches and play out on its lawn her infant imaginings.
I passed the stone which said “St. Ann’s Square 5 Miles,” and the village shops, and so presently I came to The Beeches. It was not at all changed. The winter branches of the trees drooped weeping in the misty evening air; comfortable lights were geometrically imposed upon the darkness at the end of the long lawn. That one on the left, on the first floor, marks the room where Oliver slept; behind that bright pane on the right had been my study where, night by night, we had come close together in our “conversations.”
I thought of Nellie, peering about short-sightedly in those rooms, and of her queer cantankerous faithfulness, and of how, since her death, I had known little joy.
So pondering, I turned into the lane that runs down to the river meadows. It was dark and cold, but imagination livened it with Oliver’s small presence running at my side, wearing his first prized pair of football boots and thudding the ball with satisfying reverberations against this brick wall which now was nothing but a shadow cutting the darkness of its top into a sky only less dark.
Down here at the end of the lane there wa
s not a soul. I did not go into the fields, but leaned on the stile by which we had been used to enter them, and in the darkness and silence listened to the whispers that came across so many years. Then, indeed, with yesterday held in the hollow of my hand, and all its details intimate and complete before my regard, it seemed that no power could destroy what then had been, that I had but to come face to face with Oliver to know him once more in all the glad out-flowing of love from one of us to the other. In the intensity of my desire, I leaned my head upon my hands there on the stile and groaned for my son.
I did not go back the way I had come, but followed the lane where it turned to the left. It climbed here to the rising sandstone hill on which stood the church and churchyard where so long ago I had first met Mr. Oliver. There was a jagged rip in the clouds over the square church tower and through it a star or two looked down like bright eyes gazing with compassion into an abyss. Here I was back not at Oliver’s childhood but at my own. I did not know that I was looking at it for the last time, that already the happenings were in train which, in their consequences, would make abhorrent any return to the place where Oliver and I had known and loved one another.
*
I was not sure where I should find Oliver. I would begin my search in the morning. As for this cold and foggy night in Manchester which was now upon me, there could be no better way of passing it than in the brightness of the Palace Theatre which was presenting a musical show. I do not remember what the show was. What remains in my mind is that during the interval I saw Mr. Dennis Newbiggin again. I was in the stalls, and by the time I had struggled through to the bar at the back of the house, the place was a welter of people trying to get to the counter, talking at the tops of their voices, filling the air so thick with smoke that it was difficult to see from one side of the room to the other.
It was this confusion which permitted me to escape the notice of Newbiggin. He and a friend had entered the fray early. They were struggling back through the forward-pushing crowd, each precariously maintaining the balance of a full tumbler. They managed to seat themselves at a table, and I stood with my back to them, unable to move, and obliged to overhear.
My Son, My Son Page 50