Gently in the Past

by Alan Hunter

  Apparently she had rung the decorators before she left, and on Friday all chaos broke out at Lime Walk; they had spent the evening among stripped walls, the stench of paint and dust-sheeted furniture. And all day she’d been dashing round the shops choosing furniture, carpets, curtains. Then, tired but triumphant, she’d produced a splendid savoury omelette, followed by a gâteau, Roquefort and petits fours.

  ‘Something simple. I will do better another time.’

  They had eaten it in the kitchen among paint-cans and wallpaper. And it was only then, when they sat with their coffee, that she had asked:

  ‘Who is this Mrs Jonson who invites us to stay?’

  Because that had been his story, an invitation, accepted to get them away from the muddle of the flat. Gabrielle had barely given it a thought until this precise moment.

  ‘I met her when I was out there this week. She’s the wife of an American Airforce Colonel.’

  ‘Aha. And I am not to be jealous?’

  ‘Why not? She’s an attractive woman.’

  ‘She will not cook as well as I, my friend. These American women I know.’

  ‘Actually she’s English.’

  ‘Then the matter is settled. She either cooks badly or very badly.’

  ‘She makes good lemonade.’

  ‘Her hair will be dyed. I cannot be jealous of such a person.’

  ‘You’ll love the place.’

  And he had almost told her then, suddenly seeing her in that setting. Instead he had praised the country, the coast, the village and the heather that rolled to Mrs Jonson’s door.

  The heather ...!

  Just a small anxiety was that it would be past its best by Saturday; but no. When they met it, beyond Ipswich, the heather was still pulsating with electric blueness. The day too was perfect: sun after mist, hazy, the air scented with autumn. Here and there a yellow leaf was showing and bracken paling to fawn. And Gabrielle beside him was drinking it in.

  ‘This is country of great charm, my friend. It has style. It is now and then like Normandy. Would not this be a good place to seek for a home?’

  ‘You would like that?’

  ‘Yes, I think. Do you not tell me there are good beaches?’

  ‘At a village near here there is a vineyard.’

  ‘Aha. But the wine will be like vinegar.’

  So they came to the village, and the road through the gorse, and the rusty wall, the gates, the house. And there once more children played on the lawn while, further down, someone was painting at an easel. It was Reymerston; looking rather absurd in a decorator’s apron, its pocket sagging with brushes. But Gabrielle was gazing at the house.

  ‘This place, my friend ... what did you call it?’

  ‘Heatherings. Just the other side of that hedge are acres and acres of heather.’

  ‘Ah yes, I smell it. Lucky Mrs Jonson.’

  ‘Unfortunately she has to leave it. Her husband has been posted to Washington, and she must follow him very soon.’

  ‘To leave this house? The poor lady. I would not leave it for a dozen Washingtons.’

  ‘Her husband was sad too. But a serviceman goes where he is sent.’

  Then Sarah Jonson came hurrying out: ‘Oh, you’ve arrived ... please introduce me!’ She seized Gabrielle’s hand eagerly, eating her up with a fascinated gaze.

  ‘So you’re the famous Gabrielle – of course, I was wild to have you down here.’

  ‘Madame ...?’

  ‘I want to ask you so much, all about what happened up there in Scotland. My goodness, you were brave. I talked to Larry on the phone, and he was just sick at having missed you.’

  ‘Madame Sarah, I am admiring your house.’

  ‘Oh, that. Come in, and I’ll show you all over.’

  She swept Gabrielle into the house, and Gently followed with their bags. Now he had actually got a foot in there, was dumping his belongings in one of the rooms. And Gabrielle, had she begun to guess? She was only half-listening to Sarah Jonson’s prattle. Like a picture in a frame was her bold figure in the benevolent rooms, on the spacious stairway ...

  Is it that I may see the kitchen?’

  ‘This way. Larry had the fitments shipped over.’

  ‘It is not now long before you join your husband ...?’

  ‘At first I hated the idea. Now, I want to get away.’

  Diplomatically, Gently drifted off out of the house and down the lawn. Reymerston threw him a grin but, for the moment, continued his brushwork. He was painting the house. In his troubling style he was evoking the subject in that autumn moment, the rounded gables in hazy sky, the children, flowers and sunny lawn. It was nearly done. He seemed to work recklessly, throwing paint at passages that appeared quite perfect. Then they became something else, troubling, challenging you with new comment. Gently lit his pipe and watched. Finally Reymerston stood away.

  ‘That’s it, I think.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Something clicks and you have to finish.’

  ‘Who is it for?’

  ‘Sarah. She wanted one to take away.’

  He squeezed a brush in an oily rag, then sat on the grass beside his easel. Gently sat too. The two women appeared at an upper window: Gabrielle waved.

  ‘And that’s her?’

  Gently nodded.

  ‘You’re a lucky devil,’ Reymerston said. ‘Ruth, she’s carted Fiona off to Oban, to relatives there. She thought it best. The Tallises have cleared off too. You’ve damned near depopulated Walderness.’

  Gently said: ‘Did you tell Ruth?’

  Reymerston plucked a daisy. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘She asked if you knew about it and I told her that you did. She said but he’s still your friend, and I said yes, I thought you still were, and she said so he doesn’t blame you, and I said yes, perhaps.’ He flipped the daisy. ‘Then she said Andy, if he can trust you, I can.’ He slid a glance at Gently. ‘You can tell her you don’t, but I doubt if it will make very much difference. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. And that’s the state of play, old lad.’

  ‘When is the wedding?’

  ‘Oh, some time next year. Are you buying the house, by the way?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Do I rate an introduction to Madame?’

  ‘First take off that ridiculous apron.’

  Reymerston sighed and stretched out on the grass. ‘They haven’t found him, you know,’ he said. ‘A couple of days they had divers out there. I can’t look at that sea and feel the same. I went to the inquest on Quennell. Tallis was there, but not his missus. Under sedation, they tell me. She wasn’t at the second inquest, either. What a bloody mess.’ He sighed again, staring up at the soft sky. ‘I’ll tell you the last belief of a noble mind. It is that somewhere there’s a moral purpose.’

  Gently said: ‘I’ve met a man, Edwin Keynes, who wasn’t content to leave it so indefinite.’

  ‘What was his idea?’

  ‘It turned on a metaphysic. He was looking for a fundamental error in philosophy.’

  ‘And did he find it?’

  ‘To his own satisfaction. He says it lies in our concept of time, space and being. According to Keynes these are arbitrary concepts which we derive from aspects of motion.’

  ‘Do we?’ Reymerston said, turning on his elbow. ‘But this is going back to Heraclitus.’

  ‘Only,’ Gently said, ‘in Keynes’ case, he has the backing of modern physics. Matter breaks down into patterns of energy or, as Keynes would have it, motion. Time is a domestic measure for speeds of motion. Space, a description of motional relations.’

  ‘This is getting ingenious,’ Reymerston said. ‘But if all is motion, what is it that moves?’

  ‘Keynes simply points to the results of research,’ Gently said. ‘Nothing solid has ever been discovered in matter. To quote him, simple or atomic motion expresses itself without an object.’

  Reymerston was beginning to smile. ‘That’s chee
ky. I would like to spend an hour with this fellow. But I don’t see how it bears on the question of moral purpose.’

  ‘It connects like this. According to Keynes, no distinction is possible between mental and physical motion. It follows that there can be no valid distinction between a concept and a phenomenon. An example in one aspect may find identity with an example in the other.’

  ‘Oh glory,’ Reymerston laughed. ‘And he finds an identity for moral purpose?’

  ‘Well, the ethical principle,’ Gently said. ‘Which he defines as a direction from hate to love. He regards this as the most primitive moral principle, requiring the most primitive physical principle to equate with. The phenomenon he selects is the dispersal of energy, which involves direction from potential to equilibrium. So he obtains a motional reality essentially ethical in character.’

  ‘And you go along with that?’ Reymerston laughed.

  Gently blew a smoke-ring. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It’s a charming idea,’ Reymerston smiled. ‘But I would need to go over the logic again. I seem to remember Sartre shaping up to this one, and then quietly backing away.’

  ‘Perhaps Sartre was still stuck with time, space and being.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Reymerston smiled. ‘Or perhaps he didn’t walk the beach by moonlight.’

  ‘Edwin Keynes is a lover of trees.’

  The two women came out of the house and Reymerston jumped up and pulled off his apron. He offered a hastily-scrubbed hand to Gabrielle, who went at once to stare at the picture.

  ‘I will buy, monsieur.’

  Reymerston grinned. ‘The house is for sale, but not the picture.’

  ‘Monsieur has a talent that is unique.’

  ‘I believe Monsieur George is of a similar opinion.’

  ‘I too wish a picture of this house.’

  ‘He never paints them twice,’ Sarah Jonson said.

  Gently said: ‘I’ll show Gabrielle the heather.’

  He took her arm and led her down to the gate. If anything, the heather was more blue than it had been at the beginning of the week. Haze smudged the distant trees and the slender spire of the church, bees buzzed drunkenly, the broad bosom of the heath exhaled scent in warm waves. She clung to his arm in delight, taking deep breaths of the heady odour.

  ‘Did you like the house?’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’

  ‘Shall we not live there?’

  He felt her arm tighten.

  ‘I think it is possible. There are trains to town. I shall of course sell my house in Finchley.’

  She stared up at him, her eyes in a dazzle.

  ‘I could be – mistress, of that house there?’

  ‘Mistress of Heatherings.’

  ‘I dare not believe it!’

  ‘Sarah is holding the sale for us.’

  She hid her face against him, very still, scarcely breathing. But when she looked up at him again her face was wet with tears.

  ‘I am a fool – I cannot help it! You should not have told me this so suddenly. I wanted ... I wished ... I did not know! All at once, my life has become as a dream. And this is possible?’

  ‘It’s a long way from Heathrow ...’

  ‘Oh, you idiot of a man. I have secrets too that I do not tell. What do you think I am doing in Rouen?’

  ‘In Rouen ...?’

  ‘Yes – yes. I do not go just to order stock. I have taken Andrée into a notary’s, and soon now she is a full partner. Do you not see? Perhaps once a month is all I need now to be in France. How can I part from you more often? Am I a woman made of stone?’

  ‘You have done this—?’

  ‘I tell you yes. I am your wife now every day. And together we shall buy this house – in all things, everything, together! Oh my friend, why do I cry? In my heart there is too much joy.’

  She burrowed her face in his jacket, to cry again without sobs. But almost at once she pulled away to stare at him with anxious eyes.

  ‘She is holding the sale? Oh, let us close it!’

  ‘But we can do nothing on a Saturday.’

  ‘Ah yes – come – we must clap hands. My friend, I am business, you are not.’

  She fairly tugged him back through the gate. Sarah Jonson and Reymerston were still appraising the painting. The children had joined them: they formed a small group at the corner of the lawn. Gently held Gabrielle’s arm:

  ‘Just a moment.’

  Noon sun was flush on the bricks of the house, on the twin gables, the casement windows, the four dormers, the graceful porch. Shining where it had shone for most of three centuries, while martins had trained their flights to the eaves, while the scent of heather had stolen into the rooms: under such chalky Suffolk skies ...

  ‘Oh, my friend – come along!’

  Reluctantly Gently followed her.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she said to Reymerston, ‘I have changed my mind. I no longer wish the picture – I will take the house!’

  Brundall, 1980–81

  NOTE

  I wish to acknowledge a hint for the above book taken from a Warwickshire author, a man who went to London and made a few bob writing before returning to his native county. He too had literary debts.

  A.H.