Past Caring

by Robert Goddard

  “I shall miss you while you’re away,” Elizabeth said.

  “And I you. That is why I should be so very pleased if you would consent to accompany me.”

  “To Barrowteign?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry, you would be in excellent hands. There is my mother and my brother, his wife and their son. And I could show you the delights of Devon.”

  “And your ancestral home?”

  “It’s hardly that, but it is where my roots are. Won’t you come?”

  “If you think I would not be intruding.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And if Aunt Mercy agreed.”

  “We’ll ask her, but I’m sure she will.”

  “Then I’d very much like to go with you.”

  “You don’t look quite certain.”

  “Oh, I’m certain. It’s just that … oh, Edwin, sometimes I’m so nervous.”

  “There’s no need to be. Just trust me.”

  And she said that she did. There was no need to say that I trusted her. Aunt Mercy, flushed with her winnings, expressed unconstrained enthusiasm for the proposal. A letter to my mother elicited equal enthusiasm and plans were swiftly made. Elizabeth reported qualms in her suffragist circle about such a long absence for undisclosed reasons, but she was not to be swayed by them. As soon as my official duties would permit, we were off.

  The clock behind me struck seven and drew me forward nearly seventy years from the Sussex Downs to Madeira on an April evening. It was growing dark in Stafford’s study now. If I’d not been so absorbed in his narrative, I’d have put the light on, but the gathering gloom seemed appropriate when I considered the bright promise of that distant summer and set it against an old man’s desk far from home, with only photographs left of those he’d once held so dear.

  Downstairs, Tomás sounded the dinner gong – I’d missed aperitifs. From Strafford’s lost world, where I’d been all afternoon, it was a long way back to the present. So it came as a wrench to close the book and take it with me from the room.

  In the drawing room, I met Alec coming in from the verandah, with Sellick behind him.

  “We were wondering where you’d got to,” Alec said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice the time until just now.”

  “Leo’s been telling me about your deal. I believe congratulations are in order. Welcome back to the rat race.”

  “Thanks. I’m hoping it’ll prove a more civilized race than the one with Millennium.”

  “Sure to be. You’ve done better out of Leo than I have. I think he’s making a habit of rescuing English intellectuals down on their luck.”

  “How could I deny journalism Alec’s wonderful turns of phrase?” said Sellick, smiling broadly.

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “we are both indebted to you, Leo. I hope you won’t have cause to regret your generosity.”

  “I’m sure I shan’t. And besides, am I not a hard taskmaster? It is Saturday, and I have let you go on working. But even the avid researcher must be fed. Shall we eat?”

  Dinner was as excellent as the night before: succulent Porto Santo melon followed by roasted local rabbit, washed down with more of Sellick’s fine dão. He and Alec talked of the next issue of the magazine – and a few after that – but I said little. I was impatient to return to the Memoir. For the moment, Strafford’s world interested me more than my own and dinner, even in civilized company, was no competition. My distracted state was not lost on Sellick. While he sipped malmsey and I picked at some cheese, he finally drew my attention to it.

  “I think your thoughts are elsewhere, Martin.”

  “You’re right and I’m sorry. The meal’s superb.”

  “But your mind is on the Memoir.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Don’t apologize. As sponsor, I’m delighted to see it. How’s it going?”

  “Very well. Strafford is about to take Elizabeth Latimer down to Barrowteign.”

  “Ah yes. All is well at that stage.”

  “But not for much longer?”

  “No, but don’t let me spoil your reading.”

  “I don’t think you will. Besides, such a work’s bound to have an unsatisfactory ending.”

  “Why so?”

  “In the sense that it’s the story of Strafford’s life written before his death and therefore incomplete. Tell me, is he buried near here or in Funchal?”

  “Neither. He is buried in England, in the village of Dewford, near Barrowteign, with the rest of his family.”

  “He wasn’t completely forgotten then, if they took him home to be buried?”

  “He did not have to be taken. Strafford died at Barrowteign.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I swiftly established that he was not buried on Madeira. The British Consul then made enquiries for me in London. It transpired that Strafford returned to England in the spring of 1951 and went to Barrowteign to stay with his nephew.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “He was hit by a train on a level crossing where a railway line traversed the Barrowteign estate. That’s all they could tell me.”

  “I see.”

  “Though, as you’ll read for yourself, that has a curious parallel with events in the Memoir. But I’d better say no more at present.”

  Beyond that, Sellick would not be drawn. His smile was sphinxlike in the candlelight, his sudden revelation and as sudden reticence all too convenient. I knew then that I wasn’t the only one holding back information. In Sellick’s case, he was letting it slip at intervals. Now, I was to understand that Strafford hadn’t ended his days in exile, but back in England, by accident, in search of … what? The truth after forty years? A last sight of Barrowteign? Or something else Sellick wasn’t telling me about yet? But no, he’d said the mystery of Strafford’s fall was intact. I had to assume he didn’t know either, yet I couldn’t any longer be certain.

  We went through to the drawing room for coffee. There, on a card table, stood a solitary, dark bottle of madeira.

  “What’s this?” said Alec. “Something special?”

  “You might say so,” replied Sellick. “I asked Tomás to put it out for us.”

  “But there are no glasses.”

  “That’s because it’s not for drinking … yet. You could call it a prize bottle. Take a look. You’ll soon see what I mean.”

  Alec picked up the bottle and tilted its yellowed label to the light. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I just don’t believe it.”

  “What is it?” I said, walking to his side.

  “See for yourself … Leo’s been holding out on me.”

  It was old madeira … very old. In fact, a bottle of the 1792 vintage.

  “I’m sorry, Alec,” Sellick said with a smile. “Nothing could stop you writing the article when you did. Unfortunately, the time was not then ripe to tell you that there was indeed some left.”

  “But how …”

  “A bequest from Dr Grabham to the previous owner of this property, discovered by me in the cellar.”

  “But last night you said …”

  “That in all probability Grabham had left none behind. I know. Well, that still is the balance of probability. In fact, though, he left a few bottles to Strafford – naturally enough, as the most distinguished and discerning Englishman of the locality after Grabham himself – and Strafford left this one bottle for me to find. But I couldn’t tell you until tonight because I hadn’t persuaded Martin to research the Strafford mystery.”

  “I’m not sure I see the connection,” I said.

  “The connection,” replied Sellick, “is my description of it as a prize bottle. It constitutes our prize, our reward to drink in Stafford’s honour when your research is satisfactorily concluded. At that time, I propose that we three should gather here to commemorate the occasion by cracking open the last of the ’92. I am sorry not to have told you before, Alec, but I hope you’ll agree there was a good reason.”

  “
I suppose I must,” said Alec. “Can I at least write about it after that?”

  “Of course,” said Sellick. “As a good journalist, you should be grateful to me for providing you with the perfect sequel.”

  We laughed, and toasted in much younger malmsey Sellick’s judgement in planning such a fitting tribute to Strafford. For me, it was a long way to look ahead, but at least there was the satisfaction of knowing that Sellick’s whimsical editing of the facts could be applied to Alec as well as me.

  “I think you owe me a game of snooker for this, Leo,” Alec said. “It’ll give me a chance of revenge.”

  “What Alec means, Martin, is the certainty of revenge. Clearly, I must submit. Will you join us in the billiards room?”

  “I’d like to, but duty calls.” I pointed at the Memoir where it lay on a low table by one of the fireside armchairs.

  “Of course. We’ll leave you to it, then.”

  They took their drinks and headed off. I wasn’t sorry to see them go. I’d had enough of Sellick’s conjuring tricks for one evening and felt on surer ground with the Memoir: the dead do not dissemble. Tomás brought me some coffee and I sat down with it in the armchair beneath a standard lamp. I opened the Memoir and rejoined Strafford in the year 1909.

  Memoir

  1909–1910

  I remember that misty day at the end of August 1909 more clearly than I remember many of the days I pass here in my retirement. I collected Elizabeth from Putney and loaded her trunk into the car whilst Aunt Mercy pressed parting gifts and wishes upon her niece. Elizabeth wore a tweed dress, with a cape and a bonnet tied under her chin to ward off the chill of a long journey. I sounded the horn in farewell to Mercy as we drove off, alarming a passing dray but, strangely, settling Elizabeth’s nerves. She confessed that she had been feeling somewhat apprehensive about meeting my family and was positively relieved that we were now on our way.

  We passed down through Surrey and Hampshire and stopped at Salisbury for luncheon in a cosy tea room by the cathedral. The grey mist on the green with the great spire above minded Elizabeth of the Melchester of Hardy, whose Wessex we were about to enter. I remarked how odd it seemed to me that one so young as she should read the poems of one so old and sad.

  “Mr Hardy is not such a sad man,” she replied. “He is merely resigned to the poignant sense of loss with which every eager enterprise must one day be remembered by those involved.”

  “That’s an old thought for a young head.”

  “Perhaps, but my awareness of it will not dim my enthusiasm – or any happiness it can bring.” The set of her chin told me that she was to be believed. “Tell me in thirty years if it is so.” My hopes still to know her thirty years on took wing at that remark. It was as well for my peace of mind that I did not know how vain those hopes were or how right she was.

  We travelled on until the chalk and pale green of Dorset changed to the red earth and deeper green of Devon and, when we reached Exeter in the late afternoon, we found the sun shining there as if it had done all the day.

  “Now we are entering your kingdom,” Elizabeth said as we drove slowly over the bridge across the Exe.

  “Hardly that,” I replied, “merely my constituency, too rarely visited since I became a minister, and my home, which I am always glad to return to.”

  “Your mother will be pleased to see you.”

  “And you,” I reassured her, hoping that I was right.

  Beyond Exeter, we went by winding lanes on which cars were a rarity. It was early evening before we passed through the village of Dewford on the banks of the Teign, turned onto the Barrowteign estate and sighted the big old house among the beech trees, as familiar to me as it was strange to Elizabeth.

  My mother greeted us and at once turned her warmth and charm to ensuring that Elizabeth felt welcome. Robert we found in the drawing room, sucking on his pipe and looking more like the squire of the neighbourhood than when last I had seen him, yet with his bluff good humour unimpaired. Before there was time for any awkwardness to arise, little Ambrose tottered in with his nanny and, by the time his mother appeared, was being dandled on Elizabeth’s knee to his evident delight. Florence looked askance at this and her apparent resentment of the possible admission of a female rival to a family over which she seemed rapidly to be gaining dominion was the only jarring note in an otherwise harmonious homecoming.

  Of Elizabeth’s political activities we naturally said nothing, beyond alluding to her suffragist sympathies to my mother, who took these to be comparable with her own and still counselled against mentioning them to Robert, who would be scandalized. I was less inclined to doubt this after a tour of the estate with him, during which he speculated on increasing the rents in such an unthinking manner that I detected a hardening of his attitudes with age, or perhaps with marriage, that disturbed me. He was appalled by my hints of a coming clash with the Lords over the Budget and I subsequently said no more to him of such matters.

  For all that, Robert was charmed by Elizabeth, as was my mother. I think she recognized in her such energy and intelligence as she might once have aspired to herself had she not accepted rural seclusion with my father. They made an instantly sympathetic pair, the elegant old lady and the vibrant young one; perhaps Elizabeth saw something of Hardy’s poetry in my mother’s soul. If so, it was a great deal more than she (or I) saw in Florence’s paintings, which I found festooning the house to my considerable irritation. Elizabeth proved more adept than I in displaying some admiration for them, but even this could not endear her to my sister-in-law.

  A central purpose of any sojourn at Barrowteign was to remind myself of all the doings in the constituency, to visit and advise those with a problem and to show myself in the area. In this Elizabeth proved a great aid. Her beauty dazzled many, her wit drew out others, her grace soothed the pugnacious few. At her behest, I played in Dewford’s last cricket match of the season, which impressed the villagers almost as much as the rounds I stood them at the inn afterwards. At my behest, she accompanied me on a visit to the poor quarrying districts south of Barrowteign and there conceded that old age pensions and Lloyd George’s national insurance schemes ought perhaps to take priority over suffrage reform. We continued, in short, to be as good for each other in Devon as we had been in London. Even Flowers, my assiduous agent, was heard to mutter that Elizabeth for a wife would enhance my standing in the constituency.

  Not that it was Flowers’ typically blunt calculation that set me thinking of matrimony. That was born of the affection that I felt deepening into love. September passed as an idyll of growing happiness and hope. Fine weather attended our weeks at Barrowteign and I often took Elizabeth out onto the Moor or down to the coast, indulgences in the beauty of nature which she had not known since childhood. So far from London and my career, it was easy to forget the difficulties attendant upon our association. Insofar as I bore them in mind, it was only as a minor problem easily overcome. Much more significant so far as I was then concerned was whether I could persuade Elizabeth to agree to marry me. I doubted not that, if I could, it would assure my future happiness.

  Michaelmas was that year a peerless day of autumn brightness, every tree and every stone at Barrowteign picked out by sharp shadows in the clear sunlight of a cloudless sky. The house was quiet, with Robert off on his quarter-day tour of the tenant farms, Mother along with him to see for herself that all was well with those whose welfare was always close to her heart, if not always that of her son. Florence had gone to visit her family in Dartmouth for a few days, taking Ambrose with her. Elizabeth was eager to escape into the sunshine and I was free to indulge her eagerness.

  I drove the car up into the foothills of Dartmoor that lie between the Teign and Bovey valleys and stopped where the lanes became too rough and steep for further progress. We continued on foot, I carrying a picnic luncheon in a haversack whilst Elizabeth set a disarming pace and navigated expertly by one of my brother’s maps. So it was that she brought us to Blackingstone Rock, th
at great node of granite atop the hills above Moretonhampstead, and led the ascent. I was more breathless than she when we reached the flat top of the rock and sat down to take the view. Before us the Torridge plain stretched as far as the sea, which I could almost think I saw, so clear was the air. Behind us Dartmoor hummocked towards its wilder reaches. Down in the Teign valley, it was just possible to descry the distant roofs of Barrowteign. I gazed around in awe, breathing heavily.

  “This will never do,” said Elizabeth. “You have spent too long behind your desk in Whitehall, Edwin, I can see.”

  “Perhaps,” I replied, “but I have carried a meal on my back and you have younger legs than I.”

  She threw a fern leaf in my direction and we laughed. The sun and the warmth seemed as undeserved at this season as our happiness, but both were there to be revelled in. I uncorked the flagon of cellar-cooled cider I had brought and we toasted the countryside of my birth.

  “All over Devon,” I said, “workers will be pausing from the harvest at about this time for a draught of their native brew.”

  “Or worrying about their rent for the next quarter.”

  “Do not be hard on Robert,” I said, detecting a shaft in his direction. “He’s as good a landlord as they come. A little set in his ways, I admit, and beginning to take himself too seriously, but that’s just the onset of middle age. Losing my breath on stiff climbs is probably a sign that I’m to emulate him.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize Robert. He is a good man. He simply lacks his brother’s vision and intelligence – and humour.”

  “Any humour is your gift, and a goodly part of the vision too. Florence would grind any man down. We cannot all be lucky enough to find someone like you.”

  Elizabeth looked down and blushed, in her a rare show of vulnerability. But it was not the altogether pleasing contrast with my plain and prosaic sister-in-law that had occasioned this embarrassment. It was the implication that she might one day be my wife. What had so often been in my thoughts of late emerged in speech with a subtlety that we both realized the other would appreciate. And it was a measure of my respect for her that I did not then attempt some awkward concealment.