Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  He stopped abruptly, and muttered, ‘Perhaps I have chosen the wrong extract. It is after all not very good.’

  ‘Let me judge for myself,’ she insisted.

  He gave her a brief lecture on the premise behind the work. He didn’t seem to have hit on a very poetical subject. She understood it was about rocks and electrical currents and the formation of the earth. Still, she urged him to continue.

  What if this earth (he read) which ours we lordlings call,

  Lordlings of all things on it, we boast,

  Be but one mighty animal, and we

  But parasitic animalcules, made

  To add to his enjoyment? What if, when

  We furrow deep into the soil, delve mines profound,

  Level tall forests –

  Breaking off in mid verse he slammed the pages of his book together as if he hoped it would fall to pieces. ‘I was trying to write a scientific poem in the manner of Lucretius. Perhaps I was too ambitious,’ he said.

  ‘There is nothing wrong in asking questions,’ she told him.

  The boat rolled suddenly and she clutched at his arm to steady herself. Watson suggested she should lie down. He would go for a walk on deck to clear his head. He said he was not used to drinking champagne.

  He got no further than the flight of steps which led to the deck. Already he could see a burst of spray above him and hear the roar of the sea as it broke over the bows. He didn’t dare contemplate his clothing being ruined by sea water. It was alarming enough to think of the money he had spent during the last two weeks. ‘I have nothing to bring you but myself,’ Anne Armstrong had told him when he had proposed to her. At the time he had not realised how truthful she was.

  He peered through the glass partition of the second-class saloon. Several figures lay full-length upon the wooden benches, their baggage heaped about them. Somewhere in the semi-darkness an infant was crying. He would have liked to go inside into the warmth, but he hated the idea of being spoken to, of being asked his opinion of the weather. Huddled against the glass, he thrust his hands into his pockets. He was annoyed with himself for having picked the wrong moment to read his verses aloud – she would only remember how many times he had stopped and started. He should have waited till they were sitting by the fire in a comfortable room, not shifting up and down on the deep.

  The saloon door opened. The child’s wailing grew louder. A man, hatless and pale as death, stumbled out into the passageway and, clutching at the brass rail of the stairs, hauled himself towards the deck. Before he reached the top he fell onto his knees and retched.

  A man’s life, thought Watson, was a coarse affair, compared with a woman’s. Was it possible, he wondered, to be one of those sons of strength, a hero even, and yet retain qualities of gentleness? If a man wanted to remain on his feet, wasn’t it advisable for him to stand alone? When Quin had spoken of the future, he had felt in his heart that he was unsuited to be a companion to anyone. When it came to it, wouldn’t he find it an unbearable distraction to have someone sitting in the same room as himself when he worked at his desk? Only an hour before Anne Armstrong had said there was nothing wrong with asking questions. He could have replied, ‘Provided one doesn’t already know the answers’. What bothered him – he was watching a half-eaten orange, which had been flung down in the passage, rolling backwards and forwards in a slick of oily water – was his conviction that feelings, of any kind, were as repetitious and as conditioned as the movements of the tides. He had no more control over his own feelings than a migratory bird had of choosing the direction in which it should fly. I am an angry man, he thought, and damaged. My table manners are at fault. Depressed, he retraced his steps to the cabin.

  Anne Armstrong was lying on the bed, as if in a coffin, her hands clasped together on her stomach. She had taken off her bonnet and her boots which lay several yards apart, one pointing towards the door, the other at the bulkhead. She appeared to be asleep. He had never seen her hair before. Picking up her boots he stowed them tidily under the valance of the bed.

  ‘Poor Olivia,’ she said. ‘She is destitute.’

  ‘Would you like her to live with us?’ he asked. ‘I would be agreeable, if it would make you happy.’ Hardy had two of his wife’s sisters living with him. He said it was pleasant to have more than one woman dependent on him.

  ‘No,’ Anne said. ‘I wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘Perhaps I could make her an allowance,’ he said. ‘Would ten pounds be sufficient?’

  ‘She would be very grateful,’ Anne said, but she herself sounded less so.

  ‘Fifteen,’ he offered, as if he was bidding at an auction.

  ‘It is quite a large amount,’ she said, ‘considering the cost of living.’

  In the end he agreed to seventeen guineas a year, paid quarterly. In some way the transaction rattled him, though it had been he who had instigated it. He sank down on to the edge of the bed and stared at the wash-stand.

  Anne was cold, but now that he was sitting beside her she was too nervous to disturb him and burrow under the covers. It would look as if she were settling down for the night. She comforted herself with the thought that it would be far colder on deck. When last she had made the crossing to England she had sat up all night under a tarpaulin, surrounded by wailing babies and vomiting boys. A man with two fingers missing had played on a mouth organ. What should she do if J.S. Watson turned round and took her into his arms? What was expected of her? She was exhausted and yet she was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink. By now Olivia would be climbing into Henry Boxer’s bed with her stockings on for warmth.

  After a time, when he could tell by her breathing that she slept, Watson eased himself further on to the bed and lay flat. There was something rather soothing in the wallowing motion of the boat. He could hear Anne’s boots sliding across the floor. Through half-closed eyes he saw the blood-red glow of the swaying lamp, and it seemed to him that it grew smaller, like the rear light of a train receding into the darkness. He rolled on to his side and, drifting into sleep, flung his arm across Anne Armstrong’s waist to anchor himself.

  He dreamt he was at the hotel, caressing the ears of the mongrel dog. The coarse hairs on its neck dragged against his wrist. For some reason, though he knew it was a dog squatting there, he thought its mouth was a purse and he was curious to know how much money it contained. He stroked the closed muzzle, searching for an opening. The dog squirmed under his touch but he persisted. At last his fingers penetrated the fiery warmth of its jaws, and he looked into its pumpkin-coloured eyes and slid his thumb across the moist and silken lining of its gums. He was sure the brute would never bite him.

  The next moment he was wide awake and leaning over Anne Armstrong. Her eyes were open and she was shuddering. He uttered little broken sentences … ‘Forgive me … dearest … I need … my love …’, though afterwards he couldn’t remember whether he shouted the words aloud or if they stammered unspoken through his mind. She cried out. He pushed himself against the crushed folds of her dress and groaned. The sweat dripped down his face and touched his lips, and the taste reminded him of tears though he hadn’t wept in thirty years. Spent, he slumped sideways, his head resting on her shoulder.

  She could feel his fingertips on her neck. She had only to move a fraction and the palm of his hand would cradle her cheek. She had thought there would be embarrassment and pain – she was so grateful that she smiled. My dear, my dear, she said to herself. She felt she was now as precious and as bound to him as the parcel of books tied to the handle of his luggage. They would never be parted. Soon her arm ached from his weight, and he smelled like an invalid, but she would have died rather than shift him.

  When she woke, Watson was combing his hair in the looking-glass above the wash-stand. The noise of the engines had stopped.

  ‘Is it morning?’ she asked, staring at his broad back and waiting for him to turn round.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We came up the Mersey three hours ago.’ He didn�
�t dare look at her – he was afraid he should see, in the curve of her mouth or the widening of her eyes, some vestige of that expression of pure delight, of impure joy which had ravaged her face the night before. He still heard, ringing in his ears, her long-drawn-out howl of abandonment.

  Her dress crackled as she rose from the bed. She was putting her arms about his waist as if he was an accomplice. No longer modest, she thought she could be as intimate with him as she liked.

  ‘It’s a calm morning,’ he said, ‘though it rained in the night.’ He drew away from her and began to smooth the covers of the bed.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said. ‘Any minute the steward will be in to fetch the linen.’ She was dipping the edge of her handkerchief into the pitcher of water on the wash-stand. There was a crusted stain in the folds of her dress. He went out of the door and almost ran down the passageway.

  Left alone, Anne rubbed at the white mess on her wedding gown. During the reception at the hotel she had resigned herself to living for her husband. Now, having expected so little and received so much, and altogether convinced that she had made that rare thing, a love match, she was willing to die for him.

  The Secretary, Henry Grey, questioned by Mr Denman, said that the head master was known to be a man of considerable attainments and learning. His habits were methodical and regular, and his general manner and way of doing things rather formal. He had a minimum salary of 300L. a year, with a capitation of 4/4s per annum for each boy in the school above the seventieth. For the five or six years preceding 1869 the number of boys was between 90 and 100, and, in consequence, the head master’s income had often touched 400L. a year. In 1866 the pupils had presented him with a silver salver. The list of Distinctions gained by the boys at the school, and those who had gone on to the Universities or taken the competitive examinations for the Civil, Military and East India Services, was very satisfactory.

  PART 2

  Summer 1853

  Dr Munford had an appointment with the head master for a quarter to three. By rights, Hinchley, the timber merchant, seeing he was chairman of the School Committee, should have gone instead, but he’d flatly refused to do so. Hinchley said that an hour spent with J.S. Watson would bring him down for a week.

  Dr Munford arrived on foot; he lived round the corner from the school in Lansdowne Road. Sometimes he thought he was too close for comfort. The slightest emergency and Tulley felt free to send for him.

  The school, made of grey brick with facings of Portland stone, was set well back from the road in a quarter of an acre of dirt playground. It was built in the Gothic style with turrets and a tower, and a loggia which extended the full length of the front, under whose stuccoed arches the drill sergeant stood of a morning, wielding his hand bell. Attached to the side was a School House with a slate roof, in which, until last year, the head master had lodged with his wife. Mrs Watson had put flower boxes on the window ledges. The boxes were still there but the plants had long since withered through lack of attention. Behind the school was a brick wall and a few struggling beech trees. Though he admitted it was impressive, Dr Munford thought the building looked too much like a church.

  When he came through the ornamental gates the Revd Mr Williams was parading up and down in front of the railings. Mr Williams was vicar of St Andrews and a member of the Examining Board.

  Dr Munford nodded at him and hurried past. They had met numerous times, both at the school and at meetings of the society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge; recently they had attended the same series of scientific lectures held at the Town Hall. In the middle of the final lecture – which had taken place the previous Saturday – during a discussion on the uses of the electro-magnetic chronoscope, some sort of rumpus had broken out at the doors and two ladies had fainted. Mr Williams’s hat had been pitched from his head. Dr Munford had saved it from being trampled underfoot. Even so, they had spoken but once, some years back at a reception given for the head master and his bride. Hardy, the junior mathematics master, had goaded the committee into holding the party. Dr Munford, introduced to the Revd Mr Williams by the head master, had remarked that he disliked functions. Mr Williams had replied that they were useful since they allowed one to observe human nature. The head master had laughed.

  Dr Munford was ten minutes late for his appointment owing to an extended afternoon surgery, and was kept waiting in the entrance hall for a further five minutes. It was a warm day and the main doors were pushed back; a cloud of flies buzzed above the steps. There was not an atom of shade in the playground. The poplars, of which the committee had been so hopeful, had never flourished. Tulley said it had something to do with the soot from the railway.

  From somewhere within the building Dr Munford could hear the stamp of feet and the noise of a piano. As it was a half holiday he supposed it was the dancing class. Dancing was an extra subject and one which had been inaugurated at the start of the summer term. Right from the beginning the head master had been against it, and Dr Munford had taken his side. Both had agreed that it would never catch on and both had been astonished at the response. Every Thursday afternoon at least a dozen boys from the Lower School could be found circling energetically about the gymnasium under the tuition of a dancing master fetched from Soho.

  Dr Munford was tapping his foot on the dusty floorboards when the head master’s door opened and the Secretary, Henry Grey, appeared, laden with books and papers. He was carrying several documents in his mouth. Unable to speak, he indicated with a jerk of his head that Dr Munford might go in, and after holding the door ajar with his foot trotted off up the corridor like a gun dog.

  The head master was seated at his desk, dressed in black and wearing spectacles. On the window ledge behind him stood a scarlet geranium in a china pot. There was nothing to be seen outside the window save a cinder path leading across a strip of yard to a small gate set in a brick wall.

  The head master stood and came to shake hands with his visitor. In doing so he swept a pile of text books from desk to floor. ‘The delay was unavoidable,’ he said. ‘I hope you weren’t kept waiting too long.’

  ‘Not too long,’ Dr Munford said.

  ‘The demands of the summer term,’ continued the head master. ‘The midsummer examinations. And then, of course, there are the recitations to be prepared for prize-giving.’ When he spoke he hardly moved his lips: Dr Munford suspected he had trouble with his teeth. ‘Smithson will give part of the oration of Cicero pro Milone. It all takes time.’

  ‘I arrived late,’ admitted Dr Munford.

  ‘This year they will be examined in the Birds of Aristophanes, in the third book of Thucydides, in parts of Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides –’

  ‘I’ll be brief,’ Dr Munford promised. He sensed that there was something wrong with Watson. Conducting a conversation with him was normally a strenuous business – Hinchley said it was like dragging a loaded cart up a steep hill.

  ‘And in Latin, in parts of Livy, Tacitus, Horace and Juvenal.’ The head master squatted on his haunches and began to gather up the fallen books.

  ‘Good. Excellent,’ said Dr Munford.

  ‘Bruane, son of the civil engineer, will give the French recitation. As you know, his people hail from Bordeaux.’

  ‘Excellent,’ repeated Dr Munford, remembering that Bruane suffered from adenoids. He waited until Watson stood upright. ‘My own business,’ he said, ‘is rather more mundane. The committee are concerned about health. There’s a quantity of dust in the hall and far too many horseflies in the playground. It promises to be a very warm summer –’

  ‘Dust!’ said Watson.

  ‘Twelve deaths were registered in Wandsworth last week,’ Dr Munford told him. ‘Twenty in Camberwell. There were sixty-two in Lambeth.’

  The head master appeared not to have heard. It was a trick he pulled. Another man in his position might have cried out that such matters as dust and death were the concern of the drill sergeant and the coroner. Still, Dr Munford couldn’t h
elp thinking that today there was something genuine about his air of indifference. Perhaps he was unwell. He had flung the books carelessly on to the desk and was standing with his hands clasped beneath his coat tails, staring at the floor. His boots were quite grey from walking along the cinder path.

  ‘The facts speak for themselves,’ murmured Dr Munford, and waited.

  After a moment Watson returned to his desk. He said irritably, ‘I myself haven’t noticed any more flies than usual.’

  ‘It’s the weather,’ said Dr Munford. ‘It’s warmer than usual.’ He too would have liked to sit down but the only other chair was set against the wall by the door and it would have looked as if he were retreating. He felt uncomfortable. He should have insisted on Hinchley’s accompanying him, or else they should have mentioned the flies to the Secretary, who could have passed on the complaint to Tulley. But then, as everyone knew, neither Grey nor Tulley had an ounce of initiative between them. Grey would probably write a lengthy report, and charge for it.

  ‘It’s an administrative problem,’ he began apologetically. ‘And I hesitate –’

  ‘It’s what I have become,’ said the head master. ‘More and more I am thrust into the role of administrator. I do not submit cheerfully.’ In the circumstances his tone was mild, even melancholy. Dr Munford had the feeling he was talking about something else. Poor fellow, he thought. Whatever is the matter with him?

  All at once the head master started to rail against the short-sightedness of the Committee. It was an old grievance of his. Rather than make an investment they had allowed the school to be encircled by bricks and mortar.

  Dr Munford argued that he had done his best. ‘It was not up to me.’ he said.

  ‘If the speculators had been stopped –’

  ‘I was out-voted,’ Dr Munford protested.

  ‘If the Committee had bought up the land when I recommended –’

  ‘It’s no use going over the past,’ interrupted Dr Munford. He was relieved that they were now on familiar ground. All the same he detected a note of self-pity in Watson’s voice. ‘If I might sit down,’ he said, and without waiting for a reply he fetched the chair from beside the door and brought it to the desk.