by Gee, Maurice
‘Girl,’ James said, each time it sounded.
‘She’s not deaf, James,’ May said. ‘No, sit still, Charlie, I’ll go.’
James had a speech in his head about a man being in command in his own home, but did not make it. May outfaced him; she’s afraid of no one.
Later, while the women cleared the dishes and washed up, we walked in the warm night, back and forth by the tennis court, four men as mismatched in ideas and interests as any quartet you are likely to find, yet two of us, Eric and I, with a large affection binding us. I smoked my pipe, Eric his cigar, James and Freddie cigarettes — James’s a Turkish brand, matchstick thin, a survival from the dandyism (always moderate) he had practised in his youth.
‘Now James, come clean,’ Eric said. ‘If we’re going to hear gossip, we need to know how to respond. It’s no good just saying, “Don’t know.” So out with it, man. Are you standing or not?’
‘It’s unofficial,’ James said. ‘But yes, I am. That’s to say, if I get the nomination.’
‘Which you will,’ Freddie cried.
‘Yes,’ James said. ‘But it’s no thanks …’ The meal, the soothing warmth, our company perhaps, had mellowed him. He did not complete the rebuke.
‘What’s this I hear about Ollie Joll?’ I said.
‘Where did you get that?’ James said sharply.
‘It’s going around. There aren’t any secrets. He was bound to try for a seat. I wonder why that one.’
‘He has business interests out here. Also, with these new boundaries, it’s safe.’
‘Nothing’s safe any more. Not with Labour revving up the way they are.’
‘And because he thinks I’m …’
‘Too old.’ Freddie, always foolish, completed what he imagined James had meant to say.
‘Forgotten,’ James said. He made a sharp-elbowed quarter-turn away from Freddie. ‘Joll is a blowhard and a bully.’
‘He’s popular.’ I might as well say it: ‘He could beat you.’
James banished me too — another turn. But I was no more prepared than Eric to bend to him: ‘You should have stayed in touch, James. Reputations are nothing. Politics can be cruel. You turn away for a moment and, you’re right, people forget. Or if they remember, it’s for the wrong reasons.’
‘What exactly do you mean?’
‘Ho hum,’ Eric said.
I meant that James owned too much property, had fingers in too many pies: a carbon dioxide and dry-ice factory, a rent-collecting agency, a bottling plant, even an amusement arcade, and — this told most against him — owned two farms with managers running them, farms that returned soldiers had been forced to walk away from. Dudley Aimer (a long-standing friend: he had promised to do the jacket for our composite murder story) drew a cartoon of James thin as a rake, prune faced, hook fingered, with pockets as fat as Christmas puddings and coins and banknotes tumbling out, and although he rarely needed names on his caricatures, supplied one on this occasion: James Tinkling. The name stuck. My brother-in-law was tinkling with gold coins after that.
‘There’s been a change of mood. But more than that, a historical change. We’re not where we were ten years ago. There’s a new wind blowing —’
‘You can stop the journalism,’ James said.
‘— and it’s made people bend a different way. Yes, all right, journalism, and I’m retired, but don’t tell me you don’t know it, James. I think this is a good year not to stand for Parliament.’
‘Unless you’re Labour,’ Eric said.
‘Labour won’t win. It can’t,’ James said, dogmatic. He gave us reasons — moral not political, he was so out of touch.
Eric walked down to the stream and hissed out his cigar butt in the water. He strolled to another part of the lawn and stood with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat, looking at the sky.
When the women came out of the house, he called, ‘May, turn the lights out for a minute. I’ll show you something.’
May turned back, Rose with her, Charlie too, and, as if all three were worked by a single string, switched off the lights. Darkness came like a blow, a blotting out. Then the sky sprang like a tiger: Eric’s show.
‘Terrifying,’ Rose whispered, when she reached my side.
Eric said, with satisfaction, ‘Constellated suns.’
‘So many,’ Charlie said.
‘It doesn’t do to forget them.’
‘Day and night. Always there.’
‘Do they have planets, Eric? With life on them?’ Rose asked.
‘Who knows?’
‘Nonsense,’ James said. ‘Life was placed on Earth by the Creator. Who made His purpose clear. There’s no men or anything else on Mars.’
‘You’re like a fish, James. You can’t imagine any other world outside the water.’
Eric speculates a little in his columns but keeps away from extra-terrestrial life, things like that. I was surprised to find him so expansive here; speaking of light years, multiplied — ‘Our history, told at that distance, is like the buzzing of the bluebottle fly’ — when his real concern, his professional study, is severe and formal, although wide ranging, from the moon (he’s world renowned for his work on the meteor impact theory, which replaces the old volcanic belief) to variable stars.
‘One of the things I missed in England was the Southern Cross,’ Charlie said.
‘It’s the purest of the constellations,’ Rose said. ‘The perfect one. But everything is perfect up there.’
‘I wish that was true,’ Eric said.
We stood silent for a while. I felt drawn out of myself, perhaps we all did, into the immensities of the universe — in a state where questions and answers drift into nothing and only wonder remains; and the eye, that tiny organ, seems not to understand but absorb the mystery.
Charlie sighed, Rose murmured and James said impatiently, ‘Is anyone getting cold?’
Far away, Vi’s bell made its plaintive call.
‘Girl,’ James said.
‘No, Charlie. You go, James. She’s your wife,’ May said.
Impossible to see his face, it made a pale blur. ‘I can’t do anything for her,’ he said; then, seeming to hear himself: ‘In nursing, I mean. I provide, that’s my part.’
‘Perhaps all she wants is for you to hold her hand. On New Year’s Day. Go on, see.’ May is daring, dares anything, but was on top of a volcano now. Charlie started off. May took her arm. ‘No, James will go, won’t you James?’
The bell rang again. We all, far from the house, felt that we might hear Vi shrieking soon.
Then James said, ‘Damn. Damn.’ He broke away and seemed to dart, shadowy, to the house. The hall light went on; we glimpsed his back as he lunged towards the stairs.
‘He won’t hurt her?’ Charlie said.
‘He’ll hold her hand, like I told him,’ May said.
‘I don’t think they’ve spoken alone for months. Maybe years.’
‘Well, New Year, renewal time,’ Eric said. ‘Now, look here. I’ll show you something.’ He pointed us at the sky again, facing north, where the Hutt suburban glow interfered less, and showed us a group of stars between the Pleiades and Orion. ‘Now up-wards a little bit, to the right, see those stars in a flat triangle.’ He might have been showing us microscopic objects on a slide, but equally a view of distant villages where he lived. ‘They’re Alpha and Gamma and Delta Ceti. Now come south.’ He aimed us patiently, produced us from the triangle’s longest side until we came to a fourth bright star, close enough to be part of the group yet far enough away to stand on its own. It seemed we could choose.
‘If you’d looked a few weeks ago you would have seen only a pinpoint of light. And if I stand you here for two more weeks —’ he took May first, Charlie second, by the shoulders, and anchored them — ‘you can watch it start to fade away.’
‘What is it?’
‘Mira Ceti. It’ll shine like this for a little while, then take about three months getting dimmer. After that, for half a ye
ar, you won’t see it at all.’
‘Why?’
‘No one knows.’
‘Oh come on, Eric, surely you …’
‘Nope. Variable stars get eclipsed by some dark body or other, that’s fairly certain, because it takes such a short time, but this — there’s no explanation. Mira Ceti shines for a while, then something unknown happens and it fades and goes away.’
‘It’s spooky. Like ghosts,’ Rose said.
‘But while it’s dark it’s still there, doing what it does,’ May said, ‘so don’t treat us like a primer class, Eric.’
He laughed. ‘There’s a good scientific reason, but no one’s found it yet.’
‘Charlotte. Girl,’ James called from the kitchen door.
‘I’ll have to go,’ Charlie said.
‘What is it, James?’ May asked.
‘I can’t do anything with her.’
Charlie crossed with him on the lawn and went upstairs.
‘What is it?’ May asked again.
‘She’s crying now. She says she’s all alone. She says …’
‘Yes? What?’
‘She doesn’t want this new year.’ James shook his head petulantly. ‘How can I be expected … ? I need support, not this sort of thing.’ But that was enough; he tied himself up tight like a bundle of sticks. ‘I’m sorry. I meant us to have an enjoyable day.’
‘Come here, James. I’ll show you Mira Ceti,’ Eric said.
‘You can use it in a political speech,’ I said.
Chapter Three
Three weeks later. The scene: my study.
Not all in our band of scribblers were pleased to see Owen Moody arrive. Roy Kember, especially, disapproved. Roy and I are the relic of an informal club of twenty young, or youngish, men — twenty at its peak — whose business was conviviality. We talked about poetry, music, politics, sport, the woman question, world events, and sang songs round the piano and smoked a lot and drank a lot of beer. Our name was The Frothblowers’ Club. To join you must display — in style and conversation — a comic surface and be serious underneath. We had good times until the War decimated us. (Note: ‘decimated’ used in its proper sense.) Some became too serious after that. Others indifferent. All too old. The Frothblowers’ never re-formed. Several among us stayed good friends, but only Roy and I met regularly. He was a waspish man, embittered by his failure to be great. He was ready to sting — a misused word would do it — and his victims were almost always young. I liked him for his honesty and his sharpest sting saved for himself.
What a pity he became a different man when he wrote. I had to cut ‘trucidation’ and ‘lethiferous’ from his chapter, and ‘Cain’ when he wrote of killing and ‘Cupid’ when of love.
Roy felt we should have had a meeting before inviting anyone else to join. ‘Let’s hear some of your stuff. Recite it,’ he told Owen.
‘I don’t have it on the tip of my tongue,’ Owen said. ‘But I gave Mr Holloway some sample paragraphs. I’m happy to read those if you like.’
‘Not necessary. They’re good enough,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry if you don’t want me, Mr Kember. I’ll go if you decide to blackball me. But can I say how much I admire your work.’
‘I haven’t got any work,’ Roy said, liking Owen less.
‘We don’t blackball,’ I said. ‘Here’s how things stand. Owen came along at my invitation. Eric’s too. So you can get a look at him. I’ve asked him to write a sample chapter. What you don’t know is that Marcus Waller has pulled out. So Owen’s going to have a shot at his bit. Which he’ll read to us next meeting. If we don’t like it, he’ll go away. All right, Owen?’
‘You won’t see me for dust,’ Owen said.
‘Roy?’
‘As you wish.’
The others said, ‘Welcome aboard’ and ‘Good to have some young blood’, and we settled down with our pints and pipes to hear Tom Gow. His chapter put in twists of plot — creaky, clumsily worked. As for the rest of it — must every hired thug have a scarred face and eyebrows that meet in the middle? I saw tightened lips and downcast eyes, and felt an anger equal to Roy’s at words misused.
A smile, a little jeer, showed on Owen’s mouth. Tom Gow was ‘young blood’ too.
‘You boys need some lessons in grammar,’ Roy said.
So we talked about collective nouns with singular verbs and left the real messes for me to clear up. I took Tom Gow aside and went over the worst. He’s a fellow who burns with resentments; I heard the sputter of their igniting as we spoke, and guessed I’d have his letter of default in a day or two. We were going to need Owen Moody.
• • •
In case anyone is interested, here’s a summary of our story. A gunshot rings out in the night. John Woodley, the dictatorial and unpopular Prime Minister of New Zealand, is found by his secretary slumped over his desk, with a bullet hole in his forehead. His limp hand rests on a revolver, but Inspector Jarvis is not fooled for a moment: this is murder, not suicide. (In Roy’s chapter it turns out that he was not meant to be fooled, the murderer required only ‘a temporary obfuscation’.) Woodley’s daughter, as attractive as he is cold and closed …
But I can’t go on. Nobody is interested. How did we persuade ourselves to do it? Since Adam’s day fools are in the majority, the poet says. Self-importance played a part (that’s four or five of us — editors of joke books, authors of dud novels and ‘thoughtful’ essays and limp poems), ambition too (Tom Gow, Owen Moody), perhaps despair (Roy Kember). Only Eric joined for fun. What a mish-mash we concocted — Cupid, Cain, two Prime Ministers murdered, the second by an undetectable poison, the corpse of a fallen woman in a trousseau box, a motorboat running down a swimmer, a thick-headed coroner, meant to be Dickensian (my chapter, I wrote two), a seedy boarding-house by the Basin Reserve, where a gang of conspirators … Enough, enough. The conspirators are fascists, led by the deposed Minister of Finance and a bald-headed mustachioed man with an Italian accent. Enough.
We wrote nine chapters, only one of them any good (I’ll come to it), and dreamed of fame and fortune, while smugly dismissing Sayers and Christie and Marsh — ‘the knitting circle’. We had no women in our group.
• • •
They left in two and threes and I called Rose to help me clear away the glasses and ash trays. She held her nose at the ‘ugly smell’ and threw the windows wide to let in air. Eric carried bottles out by their necks, four in each hand, a barman’s trick. He hugged Rose when he came back, whirling her round with flying skirts. They enjoy each other. I’m envious of his ease with women — of his ease with everyone — and awkward, a little, with May, whom I’d like to hug with the brotherly freedom Eric uses with my wife.
‘I’ll walk Eric up the hill,’ I said. (Great walkers, the pair of us, on Wellington’s hills, up winding paths and zig-zags and flights of steps, but must look like Laurel and Hardy, I bagging along, he barrelling. Appearances, though, give a wrong impression. I’m prone to anger and squeakiness not tears and Eric is no bully but speaks out.)
We put on our hats and went into the still night, where we found Owen Moody in the street, whacking his hat on his thigh.
‘Waiting for my ride,’ he said.
‘Who? Taylor?’
‘He promised eleven on the dot.’
‘You’ll hear him half a mile away with that open exhaust,’ Eric said.
Owen put his hat on and lit a cigarette. He looked like an actor in a movie — flaring match, light on his face, down-tilted brim — like George Raft or the little Irish hoodlum, James Cagney, although he had the features of neither, and I wondered at the warning signs of falseness he produced along with his pleasing openness.
‘Mr Kember doesn’t like me,’ he said.
‘Roy’s not too fond of anyone.’
‘He’s sunk in despondency,’ Eric said. ‘He fires bullets into the dark.’
‘Why at me?’
‘You showed yourself. You’re not the only one he took a potsh
ot at tonight.’
‘Just write a good chapter and he’ll leave you alone,’ I said.
‘It’ll be hard not to write a better one than Tom Gow’s.’
He annoyed me. ‘We’re not in competition, we collaborate,’ I said.
‘Would you like me to brush up his stuff?’ The easy way he said it, ignoring me while knowing me, increased my anger. Eric’s soft ‘Ha’ added to it. He knew me too: I did not want the job of Tom Gow’s chapter.
‘He needn’t twig,’ Owen grinned, suddenly boyish; working, I thought, at repair. He must do it often. ‘He was my house captain in the third form at school. He used to whack my bum with the brim of his cap every time we passed. And he wrote no-good poems for the school magazine. He still writes those.’
‘I’m not having this turned into a squabble.’
‘Twelve writers together, it’s bound to be. Here comes Tay.’ He trod out his cigarette. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Holloway, I’ll be careful.’ He gave a smile — charming smile. ‘I’ll write you a good chapter too.’
‘Yippee-ki-ay-ki-oh,’ Taylor sang as he U-turned his motorcycle. ‘Lovely night, uncles. I can’t take all three of you, I’m sorry.’ He pulled goggles from his pocket for Owen. ‘Hold on to your hat. I want to break my record going back.’ He grinned at us. ‘Four minutes from Oriental Bay, how’s that?’
‘You’ll kill yourself,’ I said.
‘And die with a smile on my face. All set, Owen?’
‘Think about my offer, Mr Holloway,’ Owen said.
‘I sing all the songs that the cowboys know, ’Cause I learned them all on the radio,’ Taylor warbled, and roared away.
‘Young fool. What does Moody see in him?’ I said.
‘He’s using him for free rides,’ Eric said.
We walked along Hobson Street, crossed the suspension bridge and climbed the hill. Eric has a lumpy walk, no ease, no elegance, yet he moves without distress, uphill and down. A long flight of steps will make him pant, but he listens to some counter in himself and slows or quickens as it ratchets up and down. He has the science of it pat, I’m sure.
Usually on our walks we talk non-stop. I might start with a remark about some political event, some medical discovery, some book I’m enjoying, or horse race or mountaineering feat — whatever presents itself — but my talk is a thin stream flowing into Eric’s river, which swallows it almost at once. He rolls away with the subject, over falls and rapids, along broad reaches — one could extend the metaphor down to the sea. Once as we stood on the hills by Johnsonville and looked into the scrubby valleys to the north I made a remark about recent discoveries in soil deficiency, and Eric was away, from trace elements to organic chemistry, to the carbon cycle, to microscopy and optics and metrology (with a detour into the standardisation of the Enfield and the BSA inch), to ways of seeing, ways of feeling — I might have left out a step or two — from feeling to judging, and moral judgement, to Lytton Strachey’s condemnation of Thomas Carlyle’s ‘reckless moral sense’, and I discovered why for some time it had been his joke to refer to me as Mr Caraway. Strachey likens Carlyle’s ruinous obsession to the passion for caraway seeds of some German cooks: whatever the dish, they cannot leave them out.