Marcus wrote the date at the top of his page, and below it, “First Experiments with Mr. Burnaby.”
Mr. Burnaby looked up. “Mind you, I shall want to read your notes,” he said. “It doesn’t matter much how you write them, but be sure you put in everything.”
In the afternoon Mr. Burnaby took Marcus for a walk in the grounds. These were roughly the shape of a triangle, narrowest near the village and broadening out to a width of about three-quarters of a mile: at the base of the triangle was a line of sandhills and beyond the sandhills the shore at the mouth of the lough. With the exception of the walled garden behind the house, the land was probably almost valueless. None of it was farmed: it was simply a rabbit-warren.
The house had originally been a military barracks: then a coastguard station. In 1905 the Government had sold it and it had been used as a private house ever since. Mr. Burnaby had bought it in 1918.
“Of course it’s inconvenient from the modern point of view. I’ve often thought of putting in a plant to make electric light, but somehow I never have. I know the lamps are a nuisance to the servants, but I think they suit the place better—and after all if I did have all the up-to-date gadgets I’d need fewer servants—and that would bring Father Donaghy down on me for causing unemployment.”
“Who’s Father Donaghy?” Marcus asked.
“The parish priest. I should think I owe it to him that I wasn’t burned out in The Troubles—like the Temples and the Jerrolds. I expect he pointed out that I paid satisfactory wages, and had no rents to collect—and that my land was of no value to anyone except myself.”
In the evening they played tennis again, and again Marcus was beaten. It annoyed him that Mr. Burnaby didn’t exert himself very much, while he had to spend the whole time running backwards and forwards across the court at full speed.
It was nearly dark when they stopped. Afterwards, sitting in the library, Mr. Burnaby taught Marcus how to play double dummy auction bridge: they went on playing till bed-time.
The next day was spent in much the same manner. For three hours in the morning Marcus looked at pictures which Mr. Burnaby hung up for him. In the afternoon they played tennis once more. Marcus played worse than ever, and when, in the third set, he found himself beginning to win he accused Mr. Burnaby of not trying.
Mr. Burnaby denied this, but Marcus wasn’t convinced and they stopped playing. Marcus was glad to stop in any case. He was tired and hot. He suggested to Mr. Burnaby that they should go and bathe: but Mr. Burnaby said he hadn’t bathed for twenty years and wouldn’t start again now. “All the same,” he added, “I’ll come with you and show you the best place to go in.”
Marcus remembered that Caldwell—the real Caldwell at school—had been a very keen bather. A bathe would have done Mr. Burnaby good, he thought. Marcus, who had a sensitive nose, could smell him slightly. It was a peculiar smell, rather herbal than animal. Marcus knew that different people had different kinds of smells when they were hot. He had noticed it at school. He remembered a boy who had been very keen on physical culture. Every night in the dormitory he had gone in for the most strenuous exercises. Before these were over he would be flowing with sweat, and the stench from that sweat had been overpowering—bitter and repellent. As however he was on the school boxing team no one had ever dared to complain, except behind his back. And there were other boys, Marcus recalled curiously, who when they were hot, had a rather pleasant, friendly smell. This smell that came from Mr. Burnaby reminded him of something. Was it aniseed, perhaps?
Marcus went into the house for his bathing things and they walked across the grass to the rocks. Marcus undressed and dived into the deep, cool water. The sea was very calm, and clear, and not so cold as Marcus had expected. When he came up from his dive he floated on his back and shouted at Mr. Burnaby. Mr. Burnaby had found a comfortable place to sit, and was leaning against a rock, with a pipe in his mouth, and his eyes half-closed.
“I suppose we get the Gulf Stream here,” Marcus said.
“I expect so.”
Marcus turned over, and doing a surface dive, swam for a little way under water. He discovered that when he got down a few feet the water was much colder. He came up again, and yelled once more at Mr. Burnaby. “I don’t think it can be the Gulf Stream.”
Mr. Burnaby nodded his head and smiled; but he didn’t speak.
Marcus felt slightly irritated. “It’s only the top that’s hot,” he explained, raising his voice almost to a scream.
Still Mr. Burnaby didn’t answer. He nodded again and re-lit his pipe.
Marcus determined to give him a fright—make him wake up and take a bit of interest. He would swim out for a long way, perhaps a quarter of a mile, perhaps even half a mile. He began with a slow, steady breast-stroke: after thirty yards or so he changed to side-stroke, and then to a slow over-arm that was supposed to be trudgeon. He had once swum a mile in the baths at school. He hadn’t enjoyed it much, but at least he had been able to count the lengths to see how he was getting on. He knew that if necessary he could swim more than a mile, but in the baths there had always been the knowledge that at any moment he could stop and get out, the assurance that if he suddenly got cramp in the deep end the swimming instructor would jump in and rescue him. Out here there was no such feeling of safety and comfort. If anything went wrong he would drown. It would be well to take it easy. It wasn’t even as if he were fresh. He had felt quite tired after the tennis. He stopped and lay on his back to rest. He spread out his arms and closed his eyes. The sun felt warm on his face, on his chest and his stomach. But the back of his head was cold, an unpleasant, prickly cold, which seemed to eat into his skull. He thought of the deep water below him, full of fish and crabs and lobsters. He imagined some monstrous creature stretching up a black arm and dragging him down to the dark sea-weed at the bottom. He was a little frightened.
He began to swim again. He swam breast-stroke at first, but his neck was getting stiff and he changed to side-stroke. Then, quietly, and without any warning whatever, something happened, which was very like the horrors he had imagined.
About eight yards to his left a large, triangular fin rose above the smooth surface of the water. It was only there for a moment, but when it disappeared it left behind a little swirl in the place where it had been: in another moment the swirl too had disappeared.
Marcus had never seen a shark before, but he had not the slightest doubt that there was one quite close to him now—perhaps gliding up towards him at this very instant with its jaws open, ready to crunch its teeth into his leg. He did not exactly panic. He was extremely frightened, but he acted exactly as he would have done if he had had plenty of time to think. He knew from the adventure stories he had read that sharks were supposed to be frightened of splashing and noise. He knew too, that the faster he swam the more noise and the more splashes he made. All this passed through his mind in an instant. He began immediately to swim back towards the shore, kicking his feet violently and making the strongest and quickest strokes with his arms that he could manage. He had never swum so fast before, and he had never swum fast for so long a distance.
He was completely exhausted when he reached the rocks. He pulled himself out and half hung, half squatted on a narrow ledge just above the level of the water. The rock dug into his flesh and pressed against his ribs, but, panting with relief, he hardly felt the discomfort. He was done in, too weak at first even to climb up to where Mr. Burnaby was sitting, drawing peacefully at his pipe. He had done the crawl—or an approximation to the crawl all the way back. He gasped and gaped like a stranded fish.
Mr. Burnaby peered over the edge of the rocks and looked at him. “You’re a clumsy swimmer,” he observed. “You shouldn’t splash so much.” Marcus made no response and he went on, “You should try to learn the side-stroke. It’s much the nicest stroke to watch. You fling your arms about too
much: it’s very ugly looking. I’m sure you could learn it if you tried. I used to do it. I’m sure I could teach you to do it.”
Marcus was enraged. After all he had swum for his house in the last swimming sports before he left school—and he’d improved since then: if he’d stayed another term he’d probably have been in the school team. He forgot that he ought to be polite to Mr. Burnaby. “Anyone can swim side-stroke,” he growled. “It’s too slow.”
Mr. Burnaby was offended. “Of course if you’re going to take up that attitude”, he retorted, “you’ll never learn to do anything. As for saying the side-stroke’s slow, it’s what’s always used in races. It’s much faster than the breast-stroke, and so much more graceful.”
But Marcus too was offended. Swimming was his one athletic accomplishment. Side-stroke indeed! Graceful! “It may have been the thing fifty years ago,” he said rudely, “but no one but a dud would swim side-stroke in a race now.”
“The over-arm side-stroke I mean,” Mr. Burnaby persisted. “It took the place of the old side-stroke. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a really good swimmer.”
Marcus unfortunately never had seen an adult swimming competition. While he dressed he explained that he had been at a school which specialised in swimming and that he knew a great deal more about it than Mr. Burnaby. He talked about the crawl and the trudgeon-crawl, the best method of breathing and the scissor-beat.
When he felt that Mr. Burnaby was convinced he told him about the shark. Mr. Burnaby, however, refused to believe in the shark. “It was probably a porpoise,” he said. “They’re quite harmless.”
CHAPTER XIX
THAT evening at dinner Mr. Burnaby asked Marcus who were his favourite authors.
“John Buchan and Ian Hay,” Marcus rejoined promptly.
Mr. Burnaby was horrified. “Ian Hay!” he exclaimed in a tone of the deepest disgust. “But he’s so dreadfully vulgar!”
Marcus blushed. He and Margaret had once had a nurse, who on certain occasions was in the habit of demanding, “Who’s been vulgar?” If neither confessed they would both be sent to the W.C. Ever since, he had connected the word with the improper, the slightly indecent. “How do you mean, vulgar?” he enquired.
“Cheap,” Mr. Burnaby explained. “He writes for the gallery—sentimental in the worst possible way.”
Marcus thought of Pip, his favourite novel. It had been lent to him when he had ’flu, during his second term at Shellborough. The following holidays he had given a copy of it as a birthday present to his father, and ever since he had re-read it at least three times a year. He had indeed made a habit for a while of giving novels by Ian Hay to the family at Christmas and birthdays, and borrowing them afterwards at intervals to read himself. Margaret had eventually pointed out the meanness of this practice and he had had to abandon it—though by that time the house was provided with cheap editions of The Safety Match, The Right Stuff, A Man’s Man, A Knight on Wheels, The Willing Horse and Happy-Go-Lucky.
“Have you ever read Pip?” Marcus asked, his mind returning to his favourite. Surely Pip was irresistible.
“Pip, A Romance of Youth.” The very tone in which Mr. Burnaby quoted the title in full was a condemnation. “I tried to read it. It nearly made me sick. You don’t mean to tell me you liked it?”
“But I do like it,” Marcus declared.
Mr. Burnaby refused to be convinced. “I don’t see how you can,” he said. “Probably you haven’t read it for a good while. You wouldn’t like it now.”
“I read it at Easter,” Marcus told him, beginning to feel a little ashamed of his taste.
“This Easter!” It was hard to believe. “You only think you like it,” Mr. Burnaby decided at last. “In a year or two you’ll see through it. You won’t be able to understand how you could ever stomach the stuff.”
Marcus considered that this would be a sad state of affairs, but he thought it wiser to change the subject. He mentioned Buchan, his other favourite. Surely Buchan was safe. At school even the Head had read Buchan—books like Prester John and Salute to Adventurers weren’t just ordinary novels, bits of them were quite stiff reading. It was almost history really.
“Oh Buchan’s not bad,” Mr. Burnaby replied, without any enthusiasm. “He can write thrillers—The Thirty-nine Steps was quite a good yarn, but when he tries anything more serious he gets out of his depth.”
“What about Witchwood?” Marcus asked. It wasn’t one of his own favourites, but for that reason it might be more likely to appeal to Mr. Burnaby.
Rather to his surprise Mr. Burnaby had read it. “I saw a review of it,” he said. “The subject interested me: so I sent for it. It’s no good. He can’t do that sort of thing. He can’t bring it off. Very few writers can. The trouble is they don’t quite know what they want to bring off. Arthur Machen can do it—evolve a sense of the presence of evil—and of course, Henry James did it in The Turn of the Screw—but then that man could do anything. The trouble with John Buchan is that he knows nothing about what he’s trying to describe.”
“Maybe he’s better not to know anything about evil,” Marcus ventured.
“Certainly,” Mr. Burnaby agreed, “and better still not to try and write about it.”
This conversation had begun between mouthfuls of soup and continued while Mr. Burnaby carved a roast chicken. Now there was silence for ten minutes or so while the chicken was eaten. Marcus was glad of the respite. He determined that if the inquisition were renewed he would stick to the classics. After all he did like Dickens and Scott and Thackeray. The Pickwick Papers had made him roar with laughter, he remembered with a certain satisfaction, while Bleak House had plunged him into gloom.
He stole a glance at Mr. Burnaby and saw that he was smiling to himself as if something were amusing him. It might just be, of course, that he was enjoying the chicken, for he was fond of his food, but it might mean that he had something funny to say. Marcus smiled too, partly in sympathy, partly in anticipation. As soon as he had finished his chicken he glanced up hopefully, ready to laugh if Mr. Burnaby should have a funny story to tell. On the previous evening Mr. Burnaby had kept him in fits of laughter with reminiscences about dogs and cats, and a pet monkey he had once had.
Mr. Burnaby, however, was looking serious again. He rang the bell, and remarked, “You’re going to have a lot of time on your hands, I’m afraid. For the present I don’t want you to work—I mean do our special work—except in the mornings; but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do other work—learn French, for instance.”
“I did French at school,” Marcus answered. He didn’t like French. When he left school he had felt that he had finished with French, as well as maths and physics, compulsory games and the Officers’ Training Corps.
“Can you read a French novel as easily as an English one?” Mr. Burnaby persisted.
“I’ve never tried.”
Mr. Burnaby took this to mean that Marcus couldn’t read French at all. “It’s wonderful how easy it is to learn,” he said, “and yet at school, I suppose, they were so busy teaching you French grammar and making you practise trick sentences, that it never occurred to them that you might want to read the language. The academic mind is a dreadful thing. It’s a pity. It has always seemed to me that reading novels should be one of the principal parts of one’s education, and I suppose there are more good novels in French than in any other language. I have read most of them—most of the good ones I mean—and it would be a pity if you were never able to do the same.
“Oh well,” he went on, glancing at Marcus’s unenthusiastic face. “We’ll let you off French meantime. All the same I think it would be a good idea for us to read some book together in the evenings. Would you rather have fiction, or something like Jowett’s Plato, say—or perhaps you did Plato at school?”
“I didn
’t do Greek at all,” Marcus informed him. “I was on the modern side.”
Kate had come in with a dish of stewed pears. Mr. Burnaby helped Marcus and himself. “I leave it to you,” he said. “You choose a book.”
“Oh no, you choose,” Marcus responded hastily, feeling that it would be dangerous to show a liking for any author without first hearing Mr. Burnaby’s opinion of his work.
But Mr. Burnaby was determined to be magnanimous. “No, we’ll let you choose this time,” he insisted.
Marcus frowned. He didn’t want to read Plato, or Julius Caesar, or Livy, even in translations. He might as well have been back at school—and didn’t he get any time off? Was he never going to be allowed to amuse himself? Hardly noticing what he was eating, he got the stringy piece of a pear into his mouth and wondered what he should do with it. Should he put it out or swallow it? He swallowed it.
Dickens, Scott, Thackeray. They at any rate must be safe from disapproval. He repeated the names over and over again to himself—Dickens, Thackeray, Scott. . . . At last, because he had to say something, he made his choice. “What about Scott?” he asked.
“Scott!” Mr. Burnaby repeated in surprise. “Do you really like him? I always found him the most utter bore—those dreadful descriptions. . . .”
And then somehow he drifted on to the subject of Henry James—the texture of his style, his first manner, his second manner—the extraordinary elaboration of his last manner. Marcus had read one short story by Henry James—The Great Good Place. He had come across it in a collection of ghost stories and it had seemed to him the dullest thing in the book. Yet listening to Mr. Burnaby he forgot all about this. He became gradually convinced that a wonderful new experience was in store for him. The only question to be decided was, where should he start Henry James. “To have it all in front of you,” Mr. Burnaby remarked, with a half-envious sigh. “I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be best to start at the very beginning—I’ve got the old Atlantic Monthlies with the stories he never reprinted. You could study the gradual development of his style—and it was so gradual. You’d hardly believe it was the same man—that they really were by Henry James. But there it is, ‘Henry James junior’.”
The Burnaby Experiments Page 14