The Pandervils

by Gerald Bullet

  For Nicky the place was at once familiar and new. The reality confronting him strangely confirmed and corrected his childhood memories of it. The garden was so much smaller than he had thought it; and the paddock, once a vast green kingdom of happiness, was now just a paddock, a half-acre paddock. There was a magic gone, and Aunty Min for ever absent; but there was another magic come, for beauty now had for Nicky the air of a promise. The dew that sparkled on that smooth grass, the satin touch of green buds and green leaves, the thrust of flowers towards the light and the young trees yielding to the wind—these and a thousand other incidents in the lovely natural drama were somehow, he dimly felt (not thought), prophetic of a desire fulfilled. And, though he recognized a pathos in Uncle Algy’s predicament, he was too youthfully and egoistically alive to be much saddened by it. The old man had had a long life, and couldn’t, in the nature of things, last much longer, reflected Nicky; but whenever the spectre started up in his thoughts he was quick to remind himself that death was the common lot and that he, anyhow, needn’t begin thinking about it for another fifty years or so. Meanwhile there was life; the board was spread for him, the feasting hardly begun; and he did not lack appetite. These visits to the Old Vicarage, this contact with an aged man, whetted his appetite, while renewing for him that sense he had had in boyhood of worlds, many in one, of which he alone had the entry. It was Nicky who called this place miraculous, by which he meant only that its conjunction with Uncle Algy was the most improbable thing—now that one came to think of it—that could have happened. Didn’t know the old boy had such good taste. But p’raps it was Aunty Min’s doing. There was reason for this latter supposition, for it was admittedly due to Aunty Min that the Old Vicarage did not suffer a drastic change of name. ‘Algermin House’ had been her husband’s first fancy, and ‘ Pandervil Court’ the likeliest alternative. ‘But y’r aunt didn’t see eye to eye about that, Nicky. So I let her have her way. The best woman in the world. The very best, there’s not a doubt. But just a lil bit conservative, my boy, as women will be. You’ll find that out for yourself, young man. Believe me! But don’t,’ added Uncle Algy, ‘don’t be in too much of a hurry about that kind of thing. Ten years time’ll be soon enough, eh?’

  ‘In ten years time I shall be thirty-two, uncle.’

  ‘Dessay you will, boy. Quite an old man.’ This was said almost in Egg’s manner. ‘Don’t you be in a hurry.’

  ‘No hurry,’ said Nicky, insincerely. ‘Still, if I ever do get farming on my own I’ll have to instal a butter-maker on the premises, I s’pose. Farmers have to have wives, don’t they?’

  Nicky took refuge in jocularity, being shy of the subject of marriage because of his consuming interest in it, and shy of discussing his own future because he could not help knowing that Uncle Algy was planning benefactions for him on a large scale. He wished Uncle Algy had been the kind of man one could consult about intimate affairs; he wished, indeed, that such a kind of man existed. But probably Algy, like Egg, would only look solemn and uncomfortable and change the subject, and so make him feel ashamed of having mentioned it. For nowadays Nicky was uneasy; troubled by amorous fantasy, angry with himself, and more than a little frightened, seeing no way of escape but to propose marriage to Gladys Crabbe, whose presence in the house disturbed him more and more as the weeks went by. He confessed to himself that he wanted Gladys, but he knew that it was not Gladys he wanted. The thought of marriage with her made his pulse hurry, and he could hardly stop to remember that there was more in marriage than going to bed with a woman. Sometimes, nevertheless, he did remember this, and found it so little to his liking that he contrived to forget it again. He was divided against himself, the one half of him, nature’s dupe, plotting the overthrow of the other, which saw that he was in danger of bartering his life’s freedom for a brief fiery pleasure. Dash it, he thought, there’s no harm in kissing the girl; and his fancy began inventing a friendship between himself and Gladys—just a warm friendship, nothing more, of which kissing and mutual fondling should be the innocent expression. It should all be secret and beautiful and chaste. But even while indulging it he didn’t much believe in his dream; and under the scrutiny of commonsense it became manifestly absurd and impracticable, for the sufficient reason that in Nicky’s world a kiss was in effect a betrothal. In face of that convention how could he explain to Gladys that he had no ‘intentions’? The difficulty was insuperable. Meanwhile he found himself on more than one of his Sunday evenings in Mercester, prowling the streets in quest of a temptation strong enough to resolve, however crudely, his torturing doubts. He received and returned glances; he looked back, he wavered in his walk, he turned to follow, and then, defeated by prudence, turned again and resumed his original course. There was one woman in particular whom he often caught sight of; he was attracted by her accessibility, by something in her bearing that he interpreted as comradeliness, and by the feeling that here was a woman without shame, and one, therefore, with whom he himself need have no shame. Sin was not sin to her—a strange and liberating thought! He was attracted, and he wilfully exaggerated the attraction, dressing it up in all the colours of romance. Half-knowing himself to be playing a game of self-deception, he in his thoughts vowed her pretty and plucky and charming; waxed indignant with the world that had degraded her; and longed to rescue her, longed to play knight-errant to her forlornness, a part that would naturally involve an exchange of tenderness. Disgusting muck, he said to himself; she’s got something to sell and I want to buy it, that’s all. And that wasn’t the whole truth either, but it served its purpose, which was to rouse him from a fevered dream and send him hurrying off to the inn-stables where his bicycle was lodged. Cycling back in the moonlight to Mr Crabbe’s, he congratulated himself upon having escaped something that he knew would have been ugly in retrospect, a perpetual scourging of his self-esteem; but the thought could not be dismissed that life was after all none the easier for this escape, the danger being avoided but not removed. And this thought was confirmed the very next Sunday evening he had free, for this time he followed her with more persistence: still undecided, it is true, but giving freer rein to his idealizing fancy. In a side street she dawdled and from time to time cast a quick questioning glance at him over her shoulder. Wonderfully alluring she was; his heart throbbed noisily, he could scarcely breathe in his excitement as he sauntered after her, still trying to conceal his interest in her and still uncertain of what he intended. Should he speak? Yes. And what then? Nothing. He intended nothing, after all: with a pang of disappointment he realized that he intended nothing, whatever he desired. This is ugly, stupid; I’ll clear out of here, he thought; but his feet still followed—and more quickly now—in the wake of adventure, until the woman suddenly turned round and came towards him. Now at last he’d got to do something, one way or the other. She stared at him. He met her stare.

  ‘Hullo, dear!’ A thin hard voice. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m going home,’ said Nicky.

  ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ She gave him a penny-in-the-slot smile. ‘I know a place quite near.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ve no time.’ O Lord what a fool I am! What a mess! He was red with humiliation, thinking how he had wasted this poor drab’s time and that she hated him for it. He pulled out some loose silver. ‘Would you … will you …?’

  She made no difficulty about that. ‘I don’t mind if I do, Clarence. Some other time, eh?’

  ‘Yes, another time.’ He was so grateful to her for accepting his money that he feigned a more than polite enthusiasm. ‘Whereabouts do you … live? I mean, where are you likely to be?’ Almost before she had finished her answer, to which he didn’t at all listen, he was moving away, eager to put time and space between himself and this encounter, that he might forget it, or explain it away, and so stop disliking and despising himself: in which endeavour he very soon succeeded, knowing once and for all not what he wanted but at least what he didn’t want.

  On his Sunday ev
enings he went no more to Mercester but to Upridge, whose little parish church provided a convenient pretext for a two-mile walk across fields. Here, in the following spring, he met Jane. His first sight of her was in the church itself, she sitting but a few yards away, her profile clearly defined against a pillar; and in that moment it was as if the church, and the world containing it, became empty of all but this girl. Silence came upon him, shutting out alien sounds, so that in time, with much listening, he could hear his heart cry out She is mine, mine—his, not to have, for he was uplifted beyond greed of possession, but to worship and to remember. Until it was time to go he remained in an ecstasy, renewing his wonder in frequent glances, slowly gathering with his mind a knowledge of what had happened in him. In the porch, on his way out, he overtook this girl and heard her companion call her by name. She was tall and very dark; young too, perhaps nineteen, perhaps twenty; her eyes were grave and candid; the curve of her cheek was music to him. She and the woman (her mother?) turned off towards Upridge village, and Nicky went on his way possessed by her. The fields he crossed to reach Crabbe’s Farm were warmly tinged with sunset; the blackthorn was in bud, and primroses sprinkled their light along the hedges. After walking a mile or so in a heaven-filled silence, Nicky suddenly began singing hymns at the top of his voice, and didn’t stop singing, except to take breath, until he came within earshot of the farm. He wondered how he would keep from grinning at folks when he met them; but he managed to avoid the Crabbes; and James, as usual, was in bed before him.

  ‘So you’re back then?’ said James.

  ‘Not me,’ said Nicky. ‘I’m a blessed ghost.’ The remark passed for facetious, as he had intended it should, but bits of remembered verse, with other lovely things, had been running in his intoxicated head, and this phrase of all, at the moment, seemed to describe his condition best. He felt free of the body, radiant and free. Darkness had been cast out of him. ‘In bed early to-night, aren’t you?’

  James grunted, deprecating such elaborate conversation. ‘Gennelman left a letter for you.’

  ‘Letter? What sort of a chap was he? Where’s the letter?’

  ‘Come from y’r uncle at Woodithorpe. And the motor car’s fetching you in the morning.’

  ‘The what!’ said Nicky. A purely rhetorical question. He was astonished.

  ‘Motor-car. Not deaf, are you! Y’r uncle’s sending his motor-car to fetch you.’

  ‘Golly! What’s Brother Crabbe got to say about it?’

  ‘He don’t mind. It’s me does the work, not him. The gennelman soon talked him round.’

  ‘Talking of that gentleman,’ said Nicky, ‘who is he? How did he get here?’

  ‘In a motor-car. I told you.’

  ‘In a car? It must have been Tom Meadows.’

  ‘As big as a greenus,’ grumbled James, ‘that motor-car was.’ He shut his eyes and gave an aggressive imitation of a man asleep.

  Nicky, disregarding this hint, began dancing round the room singing his father’s favourite anthem: ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that bring good tidings.’ Breaking off suddenly he tiptoed to James’s bedside and asked, looking down on the sleeper. ‘Are your feet beautiful, James? I doubt it.’

  Grunt, grunt. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I was asking about that letter, James. Have you got it?’

  ‘ ‘Sin one of my pockets.’ He pointed with his nose towards the bedrail. ‘You can go through ’em all till you come to it.’

  ‘May I really! Consider, James! Don’t be rash!’ He was already at work on the first pocket. ‘Who am I to come prying into your secret life? What if I find a row of little Jameses leaning against a photographer’s stile! And their mothers, your lusty paramours! … Good,. I’ve got it.’

  ‘Got what?’ asked James, staring owlishly. ‘You’re soaked, fair soaked. That’s what you are, Pandervil. They sell beer at your church, by the look of things.’

  Nicky was reading his letter:

  My dear young Nephew: I have had a bit of a bad turn, but musent grumble time of the year and none the worse for it. I am sending the Car over in the morning to have a bit of an Outing, it will do you good and I have got a bit of news which will meet with your Aprooval, unless I’m a blessed Dutchman which I have never heard of in our family. But joking apart do not fail me, from

  Yr. Affec. Uncle,

  ALGERNON PANDERVIL.

  P.S. Away all day tell Mr. Crab.

  The prospect of a day’s holiday surprised and delighted him, but it surprised him less now than it would have done a little earlier; for in this new life, in which he had been born not quite two hours ago, happy surprises of this kind and of all kinds were only to be expected. He fell asleep thinking not of his outing with Uncle Algy but of Jane’s profile. And chancing to wake in the night he was visited by the idea, which seemed to him quite novel, that he and she must have been always in some mysterious fashion bound to each other, or at the least that he had had prevision of her in dreams: only so could he explain to himself his instant recognition of her.

  3

  Very warmly wrapped up, for there was a nip in the air this morning, Uncle Algy slowly and painfully walked the few yards from his breakfast-room to his car, being supported on one side by Nicky and on the other by Tom Meadows splendid in green livery. He had just provided his nephew with a second breakfast, for he still retained a hazy memory of his own farming days: ‘Early birds you farming fellows, eh boy! And the early worm ain’t very filling.’ Bubbling with excitement, he had talked incessantly throughout the meal, himself eating very little. ‘A little surprise for you, young Nick. Just a bit of a joke up me sleeve. Wasn’t going to tell you a thing about it till arterwards. Going to make it a case of the fay accomply, I was. That’s right: eat a good meal boy: you’ll need it. There’s to be fun to-day, or my name’s not Jack Robinson. Altered me mind only yesterday. Dashed if I don’t take the boy with me, I thought to myself. Hi Tom, I said, run over to Mr Crabbe’s place with this bit of a letter, there’s a good chap. And by the way, Nicky’ —his voice became wheezily confidential—‘don’t bother y’r head about anything Tom Meadows may tell you. Full of doctor he is; doctor this and doctor the other. If you’re a good boy I’ll let you into a secret. My medical man Brother Physic— that’s what I call ’im, takes it all in good part, pleasant young chap he is—well, he don’t much want me to go out to-day, doesn’t Brother Physic. Take things easy, don’t tire yourself, not as young as you were, won’t be answerable for the consequences—that kind of talk. And me been looking forward to this bit of a how-d’ye-do for weeks past. Not go out!—that’s a fine story. Ah, here comes friend Tom. Car ready, Thomas?’

  Seated in the car, after the agony—which he angrily tried to conceal—of the struggle to reach it, Uncle Algy consented to be silent for a while; but before long he was at it again. He drew from his pocket a bundle of papers.

  ‘Now where d’ye think we’re going first, boy?’

  Nicky, smiling, said he had no idea.

  ‘Ever heard of Keyborough?’ cried Uncle Algy, infinitely pleased with his strategy.

  ‘Keyborough.’ Nicky acted surprise. ‘You mean Dad’s old place. I remember you pointing it out to me last summer.’

  ‘I did,’ said Uncle Algy. ‘You’re quite right, my boy. We were in this very car, and here we are again, going to that very farm.’

  ‘To have another look at it?’

  Uncle Algy shook with delighted laughter. ‘That’s good that is. You don’t know how good that is, Nicky, not hardly. Yes, we’re going to have another look at it. That’s just what we’re going to do.’ He was rosy with joy.

  ‘What’s the game, uncle? You’ve got one of your schemes on, I can see that.’

  ‘Schemes?’ Uncle Algy contrived a grimace that was all innocence. ‘Me got schemes! Never. Nothing schemy about me, nephew. Everything above board, that’s my motto. We’re just going to have another look at the old farm that me and y’r dad was boys toget
her on. That’s all. And we’ve got a nice day for it, eh?’ He winked with a great show of cunning, and abandoned himself to another fit of laughing, which, however, came to an end with significant abruptness. He glanced guiltily at Nicky.

  ‘Was it a bad one?’ asked Nicky.

  ‘The dear old rheumatics,’ said Uncle Algy. ‘Faithful friends they are, never leave me alone for long.’ He grinned defiance. ‘Dunno what I’d do without ’em. But listen to this, boy: For sale freehold with vacant possession all that desirable property known as the Ridge Farm, Saffron Ridge, near Kevborough, in the county of Mershire, comprising about one hundred acres of grass and plough, together with the large and commodious residence thereto pertaining with all barns, sheds, outhouses and other buildings …’

  ‘Oho!’ said Nicky gaily. ‘They’re selling it, are they?’ He looked over his uncle’s shoulder. ‘And by auction too!’

  ‘You’re right, boy. By auction it is. And not for the first time. Man and boy I’ve seen that place change owners four mortal times. Here, you read what they say.’ He sat back and rested for half a minute, while Nicky read through the notice of sale. Uncle Algy watched him excitedly. ‘See here, boy. You’ll come in for a tidy lil bit of cash from me some day, you and y’r dad.’ Nicky scowled at the floor. ‘Shut the window up, will you … That’s better. Not enough to make you lazy: trust me. But a useful lil sum. But,’ said Uncle Algy, ‘I’m not in any hurry to get to heaven, thank you. No irreverence meant. And I’ve a fancy for seeing you folks a bit settled and comfortable now, if you follow my meaning. That’s why we’re going to look over the old place ’smorning.’