Through Streets Broad and Narrow

by Gabriel Fielding

  The Captain flushed, he perhaps felt himself betrayed by his own tongue, but he conquered his vexation and smiled at his host.

  “They always think they know best about everything, God bless them,” he said.

  Palgrave and John went up to the attic to play with the steam trains, but Palgrave was still angry and the engines ran badly so they went down to the ballroom which had not been used since Palgrave’s twenty-first birthday, three years earlier.

  It was a long Georgian salon at the opposite end of the house to Lady Eleanora’s room, but it was unheated and had the ruined air of an unused room. There was a row of gilt French Empire chairs against each of the two side walls and at the far end a small proscenium on which stood a piano with Palgrave’s guitar case on its unopened top, a set of jazz drums and some music stands with his monogram painted on their glass fronts.

  Palgrave said, “We can’t make too much racket; but I do feel like some music.”

  “I suppose that rules out the drums,” John said. “A pity; I used to be quite good once—”

  “Out of the question; we’re over Shelagh’s room. Which would you prefer me to play, the piano or the guitar?”

  “—in the O.T.C. at Beowulf’s,” John added, remembering the only occasions on which he had been able to identify himself with public-school life. Evenings between preps when, with the sticks in his hands and the drum swaying, he had countermarched backwards and forwards across the quadrangle, the echoes of the bugles and side drums clashing through the sunset.

  Palgrave picked out “Some of These Days” on the piano and the memory of Beowulf’s gave place to an even more poignant nostalgia: the vision of himself and Dymphna dancing in timeless unison down the cold floor of the ballroom past the rows of empty chairs.

  Palgrave sang:

  “You’re going to miss me, honey

  Some of these days

  You’re goin’ to feel so blue.”

  The fantasies mingled and grew: the soldier and the dancer fused into the hero: courageous, successful, certain of himself in love and in war.

  “You’ll miss my kissin’ ”

  sang Palgrave with increasing feeling:

  “You’ll miss my huggin’

  You’ll miss me honey

  When—I’m—far—away.”

  His round bald face was turned half-seeing in John’s direction. He was beginning to sway, his little hands flew over the keys like fatted doves and his light voice trilled out the words with well-bred nonchalance.

  John picked up the wires and started to brush the vellum of the smallest drum: swish swish, trick click. Jazz; I’m in the smoke, New Orleans; The Duke. I’d like to be a bulging Negro forever, pounding about in a broken rhythm. Clickety click, I’ll get into Mayfair drawing-rooms and debauch debutantes. I’ll be a white bandleader and take a private engagement to play at Palgrave’s next dance, to celebrate, swish click, the death of his father and his own inheritance. Dymphna will be here. I’ll catch her eye, step down from the stage; snake hips, master of the dance. We’ll be young for ever.

  But Palgrave had stopped playing.

  “Must you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not just the bloodsome noise; but, also, you’re out of time.”

  “If only we had some women,” John said.

  “If only we had some whiskey. Go and get a couple of glasses.”

  “Are there no women in Offaly? My God, if I had a ballroom like this I’d simply fill it with women.”

  But Palgrave was away again his eyes half-closed, a Melachrino drooping between his lush lips. “Jameson, not Scotch,” he instructed, “in the hall.”

  “Someone’s rocking my dream-boat

  Someone’s invading my dreams.”

  John jumped down onto the floor and waltzed away up the empty room. This is Toad Hall and I’m Ratty. First we play with Toad’s train and then we listen to his tenor; tomorrow we’ll go to Toad’s Church—on the estate no doubt—for Mattins; Toad was obviously Low Church.

  Unremarked either by Claire Maunde or by the Captain he collected two glasses of whiskey and soda and returned to the ballroom.

  They drank and mooned for another hour and then John said, “I’m going to bed.”

  “But it’s dreadfully early; the others won’t have gone yet.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “We’ll have to talk to Cac Wac for at least an hour. Stay with me,” Palgrave implored, “I’m frantically lonely.”

  “If you’ll let me play the drums,” said John, contracting the other’s petulance.

  “My dear, I can’t possibly; they’d be furious. Be an angel and stay just half an hour and then we’ll have the place to ourselves. I’ll sing anything you like.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m depressed—extremely.”

  “But so am I! Let’s be depressed together. If only you knew how lonely I was, worse here even than at Trinity.”

  “Why come then?”

  “It’s home,” sang Palgrave. “ ‘Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away!’ Sing with me, John?”

  “Drums or nothing.”

  “Really, you are difficult,” Palgrave said. “Life could be so simple—‘I hear their gentle voices calling.’”

  “The only other thing I could ever play was the Swanee whistle; you haven’t got one, have you?”

  “You’re so pathetic,” said Palgrave, drifting into “Swanee, how I love you, Swanee.”

  “I know I am,” said John. “Sweet, too. You think I’m sweet because you’re in love with me. I think Dymphna’s sweet because I’m in love with her.”

  “Could be,” said Palgrave, “but personally I think she’s dreadful, so eager all the time and spare. The only sort of woman I like is someone bosomy that I can go to sleep on and even that’s rather boring.” He sang a few more words of the lyric:

  “When you smile you’re so delightful

  When you talk you’re so insane …”

  and resumed, “I suppose I’m immature, really.”

  “Dymphna is heaven,” said John. “I’m going to bed to think about her.”

  Palgrave closed the piano and finished his drink. He pursued his own line of thought. “But I’ve never been able to see why it’s considered more mature to want to slobber over some dreary little creature in brassière and pants than it is to— Oh, God, I’m so bored.”

  When John got up to his bedroom he couldn’t sleep. He looked out through the mist beyond the windowpanes to the Christmassy radiance of the moonlight on a cedar tree made starry by the wet on its foliage, and thought of Dymphna, Victoria, Grania de Savigny, and Dymphna again. He was reminded of his night on the moors, the night Victoria had disappeared with her murderer after the picnic in the cave, the night he had lain awake listening for the sounds of her mother’s weeping, of George Harkess’ comings and goings and the rumblings of the pipes in the farmhouse walls.

  The fire in the bedroom had gone out but the pervasive scent of the turf still smouldering in the hall reached him where he lay, bringing with it the very silence and threat of the Yorkshire landscape on that remembered night. He attempted to block the flood of these memories and the mood they evoked, but the similarity of the circumstances defeated him.

  Now, as then, he was a guest in an uneasy household, loving Dymphna as once he had loved Victoria. Here, as there, his fearfulness of losing her seemed malformed and absurd against the sanity of the Captain and Claire Maunde, so like the affair between George Harkess and Enid Blount; so like, until he had shattered all dullness for them as he told them the news of Victoria’s disappearance.

  He might have been twelve again as he got out of bed and walked the strange room waiting for that morning when the inspector arrived to question him, to cover the moors with his dogs, to ask him to lead the police back to the cave, the very place of their picnic, and to the body of Victoria herself lying a little way beyond it.r />
  The coldness of it all touched him again, the cruel uncertainties, the crueller certainties. Between loving and fearing the abyss opened for him again as he stood motionless by the end of his bed. There was no more delimiting of the actual time he endured than there had been on that other day four years later when he had recognized her murderer on a South Coast beach. The pause in his consciousness was as long or as short as it had been then; but this time, being older, he was able to seize more adroitly the small things which recalled him to the present.

  He remembered painstakingly the whole course of his real evening and its events: Palgrave’s pathetic serenading, his desire to reply to it by escaping from it, his frustration on being prevented from playing the drums. He put on his dressing-gown and, letting himself silently onto the landing, went down the stairs to the hall. The fire there had been banked by Murphy for the night, but in its centre the rich turf glowed and trembled like a beating heart. He stirred it gently and brought it to a prickle of flame with fir cones from a rush basket.

  The light played over the painted ceiling, on the paired columns supporting the landing and brought out the colours on the tilted side drums. He saw the gilt lettering of their battle honours, the rich regimental crests.

  He took one down carefully and adjusted the sling round his neck. With his fingers he began to tap out the metre of a march whose title he could not remember. He drummed a little louder than he had intended. Somewhere far beyond the hall, in the basement, he thought, he heard a muffled scream. Horrified, he slipped the strap over his head and rehung the drum on its pillar. After waiting a few minutes longer he went cautiously back to his room again. Once safely in his bed, he slept easily.

  In the morning, breakfast was delayed; because, after the night’s disturbances, the staff had decided to stay on for a service called Benediction which evidently succeeded the usual Mass. They did not come back up the drive in their donkey cart until nearly eight o’clock and the household was consequently disjoined and disgruntled.

  Why can’t they get breakfast themselves? John thought as he sat with the others in the hall. That woman Claire ought to go down to the kitchen and fry up a few eggs, Palgrave and I could lay the table and even that idiot Cac Wac could stoke up the fire and saw Murphy’s wood for him.

  Cac Wac asked them repeatedly, “You two, are you sure you heard nothing last night?”

  “Only vaguely,” said Palgrave.

  “Nothing,” said John again. “As I told you, I was too tired after the walk over at the de Savigny’s.”

  “Damn queer. Now Shelagh heard it all right and so did one of the servants. That makes three. Haven’t been able to question Murphy yet.”

  “God!” said Claire Maunde to no one, though everyone knew what she meant.

  The Captain, on an empty stomach was, for once, nettled. “These things have a meaning, my girl. Shelagh tells me there’s a legend attached to it. I won’t specify it, but for all you know it could be one of us that’s going to kick the bucket within the month.”

  “How true. We’d all better examine our consciences.”

  Later, on the way to Mattins in the Estate Church, Claire Maunde said, “Bruce is writing a long letter to his man in the caravan.”

  “Much better come to Mattins,” said old Chamberlyn-Ffynch. “Always was a superstitious fellow, even as a subaltern, so I’m told.”

  They were late for the service and all the non-Catholic tenants were waiting between the lych-gate and the western door, with the incumbent himself, the Reverend Charles Wilson, an Orangeman of humble aspect, standing in the porch to greet them.

  They were shown by the verger to the family gallery above the porch. There were red hassocks in the high pitch-pine stalls and very little light came in through the stained-glass window depicting the giving of the tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai.

  The Reverend Charles Wilson started to preach what was evidently intended to be a long sermon, but after about twenty minutes in which he showed no sign of reaching the peroration, old Chamberlyn-Ffynch suddenly stood up and, in the manner of Sir Roger de Coverley, tapped the front of the pew three times with his spectacle case.

  The Reverend Mr. Wilson completed two or three more sentences, half-enunciated a third, crossed himself hurriedly and went back to the altar. Apart from a little girl in the front row, none of the congregation looked up at the gallery, which suggested that their patron’s interruption was so customary that it was almost an expected part of the service.

  The lady at the harmonium played a hymn and very soon the service was over. Outside the porch everyone was lined up waiting for the gallery party to leave, which it did not do until Mr. Wilson was ready to accompany them back to the Hall for a glass of sherry and a bunch of blue grapes from the conservatory. He was not invited to lunch.

  When the time came to say goodbye old Chamberlyn-Ffynch was damnably polite. He shook hands and said, “Hope to see you again sometime.” Then he went back into his study to make up the game books or sleep.

  Cac Wac was certainly asleep, glowing in a hall chair and Claire Maunde was reading her novel and smoking Turkish cigarettes. She said, “Have a good drive,” without looking up and waved a long hand at them.

  In the car John was thinking, When people are most polite when you’re leaving it’s often a sign that you were not a success. Though of course it could simply be that we, by which he meant the family or the not-County, are habitually more demonstrative; and if that is “common” of us I still prefer it; and at this point Palgrave said, “I’m afraid you weren’t altogether a success, really.”

  John was extremely taken aback at this and reacted with a dismayed humility. He said, “I can’t honestly see where I went wrong. I liked them all, as a matter of fact. Cac Wac was a healthy bore but I thought he treated me rather well. By the way, I never even saw Shelagh.”

  “One doesn’t as a rule. Shelagh only appears for rather special guests.”

  And John, who was now more angered by the cowardice of his humility than by the cause of it, thought, I hope that Shelagh dies as a result of the fright I gave her. But he said, “I’m sorry I let you down, because the weekend was a great experience for me. I’ve always wondered about the aristocracy; I was fascinated by all the tenants lining up outside the church door like that this morning. Then there was your great grandmother’s room—it was practically royal—and she herself looked like a queen. The shape of her face makes me believe in breeding. To tell you the truth I’ve always been a bit sceptical about it before; but now I can see that your people are different. There’s something about the house, the way of life, the order of the hours and days. Your father has a tremendous presence. Honestly, I’d give anything to have him approving of me; but I suppose—?”

  “Oh, I don’t think he disliked you.”

  “No, perhaps not; it’s just that he’s of a different era?”

  “Well, you see, he’s not quite used to—”

  John interrupted, “But I thought I got on rather well with Grania de Savigny?”

  “They’re badly off. Grania gets frantically bored.”

  John thought, Well you’re not too well off yourselves and my God, since that door is for ever shut to me I hope the country gets in. I hope all the fields run into marsh and bog, that moss grows on the stairs and the pigs get swine fever. I hope for all these things and for the early barren death of all heirs to all heirs to all manors, baronetcies, marquisates and dukedoms, because I know I was not accepted until it was time for me to go. There should be a new sort of aristocracy which will recognize me as an aristocrat. It will be exactly like the old one only richer, more arrogant, cold and splendid.

  Palgrave asked him to have dinner with him in the Ranelagh Club but John was lost in the prospect of seeing Dymphna that evening. She would know only that he had spent the weekend at Ffynchfort and walked in terraced gardens with Grania de Savigny. And tomorrow I am going to work, he said to himself. I will work like mad, like someone in a b
ook or a film. Aristocrats have to die. As a Harley Street man I shall hold their lives and livers in the hollow of my hand. Also I shall know more things than how to shoot woodcock and jacksnipe.

  So Palgrave dropped him off in Stephen’s Green, saying, “I’m sorry you won’t have din with me. I thought we might go along to my rooms afterwards and have some music together.”

  “Sorry, but I’m dying to see Dymphna.”

  “Well, I shall probably see you tomorrow; I’m playing squash with D’Arce Smith at the Club after lunch, but we could meet for a drink at about five.”

  “For the rest of this term I’ve got to work like fury.”

  Palgrave said, “Why the sudden hurry?”

  “It’s not sudden.”

  “If you want to know what I think, Grania did rather approve of you.”

  “Oh, Grania.”

  “Won’t you drop into the Club tomorrow, John? I think it’d be a good idea. After all, if I put you up for membership later on?”

  “I might,” John said, “but I must go now.”

  Palgrave looked very sad suddenly, he smiled a sadness and threw his cigarette out of the car window and drove away.

  John walked along into Fitzwilliam Square to Number Twenty-four. The ground floor was rented by a troupe of doctors, the next two were flats and above these a converted attic was shared by Dymphna and her cousin Emma who looked as though she had been born in Malaya, because in fact she had.

  By the railings running up the shallow steps to the black fanlighted door was Wilfred Broyle’s bicycle. He and Emma would be making very strong love by this time in her bedroom. If Dymphna were alone she would be writing up her locked diary for the week; she might, on the other hand, be out with someone: Mario Green, Groarke (no, Groarke would be working out at Kingstown, he always worked on Sundays), Collins or some other rowing or rugger man.

  John rang the bell and waited beside Wilfred Broyle’s bicycle. His heart bolted like a terrible horse, his mouth dried in his head and he had to brace his knees to stop them shuddering. Broyle’s bicycle looked sinister and hard-ridden. Did Broyle’s knees shake when he was pedalling it to the rendezvous with Emma? No. Was Broyle in love with Emma? Yes. Was Emma in love with Broyle? Don’t know.