by Earle Looker
‘Let the mind go,’ David thought, ‘and it would consume itself. So, dreamless sleep, if possible, should come as close to death as one could get. Meanwhile, feel the sun and think of nothing but its warmth. Feel the slight touch of air and remember how honor was but a word, and a word was but air and nothing was of any lasting substance. Sleep if possible without dreaming, or dream without any memory of it.’
CHAPTER 12
Cakes and Things
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word,
is what people fear most.”
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Pont de Sucre, Bruges, by Eirene Mort, ca. 1920
Back again in the pension garden, David awoke with the sense of having slept in the field. His body was cramped but his mind refreshed. He splashed the grimy sleep from his face and began to revive. It was cooler now; the sun had left his face and travelled across the garden to its other side, throwing shadows from the squat columns of the little arcade. He stood up to stretch – but froze. Beaumont’s chair was now occupied by a girl – and a rather pretty one at that!
Even before he had begun to sort his impressions of her, he felt the blood rush to his face. He wondered when she had come here, if she were a new arrival in the pension. She must have been occupied for some time in settling into her billet. Every window opened upon this courtyard, and she could not have failed to hear the altercation with Beaumont.
David looked across to the young woman. She was slow to know, like the rest of these English, but he thought her reticence was different, more like protective armor worn because of some succession of blows. They may have come from war, but she never mentioned it. Sometimes she sat for an hour at a time with an unopened book in her lap, her eyes closed or gazing into the little pool. Though somber, there was a light about her when she emerged from her reflection. Her oval face, with dark hair brushed straight back, became animated almost to the point of out-bursting comment. Their longest conversation had come when she had asked his impression of Bruges. He had told her his feeling of the bearing down of history and, by contrast, something of the episode of the ‘Street of the Virtuous Laughing Girls’. She had smiled, been close to laughter then but, as often, her lips tightened, she had reserved her ideas. He would remember her as the girl with the unspoken ideas. He would remember her almost with pain for his physical awareness of her. Her well-tailored tweeds could not conceal an articulation of figure he imagined might be superb. She was less light, less graceful than Celeste, but more mature, and there was an almost masculine hardness of body that likely came from the playing of games – field hockey, no doubt.
He thought she would have neither the same smoothness or straightness of Celeste nor her startling litheness, but there was a fight in her that was exciting to think about. So, in another way she was desirable. Turning from that, again in fear of himself, it was difficult not to entertain the idea that perhaps some tragic experience, and no doubt there had been disillusionments among civilians far more unsettling than his own, accounted for her desire to sit, also, in the full sun. Thus, he thought, their personalities might lie together. This was an altogether strange sensation since he was only so recently familiar with the feeling of thought.
Dropping his eyes from her to turn a page of his own book, Gilliat-Smith’s story of Bruges, he read again:
“By the close of the summer of ’24, the French were at the gates of the city. Soon tottering walls and smoldering embers were all that remained of its famous seaport called Dame and the vast wealth of merchandise stored there, and thousands of homes that had been reduced to ashes. The fertile countryside round was white to harvest, and Philip reaped it with sickles of flame. From Bruges to the seashore, all was one great field of black stubble.”
David sighed involuntarily and looked up to see she was regarding him with a depth of glance he found disconcerting, for though he knew a man is inclined to mirror his own emotion in a woman’s eyes that might only be observing him, there was no dullness in this reflection. Yet, there must have been a haziness covering what lay within for almost immediately her eyes cleared as though the outer wrapping of her mind had been stripped down and away as might a woman of experience, slowly and with full appreciation of the sensations of every gesture she made, lay aside her modesty for a lover.
“If you look at me that way too often,” she said, with what he thought an amazingly swift transference of the responsibility to him, “I should have to leave this garden to you and Beaumont.”
“Look here,” David said, “I mean – I didn’t mean – sorry.” He felt the values shift as if the eyepieces of a field-glass had been brought into coincidence – responsibility? Had she felt his thoughts actually reach out to touch her?
“Rose – Rose Shuttleworth,” she said, extending her hand.
David accepted her hand. “David Atwood, pleased to meet you. Miss?”
“Yes. But perhaps it would be uncharitable,” she said distinctly, her tone containing so peculiar a lift he could not tell whether or not she intended a simple statement of fact or a sarcasm, “to reprove a soldier.” She paused a moment to listen to some thought of her own, then added suddenly, as if to confirm a decision, “That’s torn it!”
“Yes,” David said slowly, not entirely sure of her meaning, knowing himself to be without any appropriate response, “I guess so.”
“Do women often behave this way when you look at them like that?” she asked.
David tried to laugh to conceal that he felt an impact not unlike a blow at the base of his brain and said, “My violence with the chaplain has given me a bad name.”
“It was rude, rather, but I think a dashed good piece of work.”
“Thanks for that. But I should apologize to you for my language.”
She smiled. “There’re tales of the language the archers used on the field of Hastings, you know: among the knights in the press at Agincourt; what the Duke said at Waterloo and some gentlemen said on the Somme.”
David looked at her: “You’ve been in the field?”
She shook her head.
“But, you’re not a civilian?” David insisted.
“Blast!” she said. “They dropped eggs on London, didn’t they? And I saw …” She stopped; Beaumont was entering the garden.
“I see,” David said. He saw a great deal, he thought. He saw the urgency that had been required for her to look at him thus, to speak as she had. She had let herself go. It was comparable to his flare up with Beaumont. No, she had meditated upon it, though her final decision had come like that. Her eyes were unwavering. He felt his mind go blank as if he had been in the midst of an attack and now awoke only to find himself in possession of a prisoner he knew not how he had captured.
“Stand-fast!” she whispered, turning toward Beaumont.
A whimper was in David’s ear, almost as if Gaspard had spoken, laying stress first upon one part of it and then upon another, ‘If you wish you have acquired a mistress. You have. If you wish.’ David thought, ‘I have made no such decision.’ Even in the other event there would be an experience not without its lessons in somewhat of a delay in indicating to her he had no such intention. It could be like the enjoyment Gaspard received with his nostrils over the bouquet of some rare vintage before he sipped. David felt himself to be strong enough to put the glass down without touching it to his lips.
“Miss Shuttleworth,” Beaumont said, “Major. About time, I think, for tea?”
David thought, ‘Tea time! When decisions can wait – or battles!’ To say something, he asked, “Tiffin?”
“Quite wrong,” Rose said. “That’s for midday luncheon. I should be glad to instruct you – in the language and customs, you know.” Her inflections seemed newly lively.
“One in the eye!” David said.
“Not bad,” she admitted.
‘Got her breath and now
talking like a boy.’ David thought.
“I hope the oojahs or whatever,” she said to Beaumont, “are better than yesterday’s.”
“Eh?” Beaumont asked.
“I dare not offer to instruct you,” she said.
“Two and three for you,” David said. “But what are …?”
“Cakes and things,” she explained.
“War was over,” David said, “the moment that cakes appeared once again in the boulangeries and pâtisseries.”
“Rather! The first sweet shop I found open, I had a gaudy time! Had a pain too.”
“You’d have been amazed,” Beaumont said, “by the queues, actual queues buying sweets even in Bermondsey where, I must say, there’s a whole class who cannot eat cake because they put all earnings into drink, despite my best effort. You really can’t help that class, can you? They’re their own worst enemies, eh what? Only recently I told Sir Lionel Hartley the attitude of the laboring class about the Surrey Commercial Docks, why I …”
“Laboring class,” David interrupted. “Aren’t we all, now? Hasn’t the war destroyed most of the old class distinctions in England?”
Rose gave David an amused glance. He saw he had either displayed his ignorance or touched upon a controversial subject.
“There’s been an extraordinary turn against some of our best tradition,” Beaumont said. “Greatly to be deplored.”
“De-mobbed soldiers?” Rose murmured, David thought not without malicious intent.
“Quite true,” Beaumont said with finality.
“Show me a soldier,” David said, “who isn’t sick of authority. Entirely natural. I don’t know England, but if there’s as much law and order as I suspect, then I don’t blame them for busting loose all over the place.”
“Conditions,” Beaumont said with an air of being possessed of information he dared not expose at the tea table, “are appalling.”
“Maybe,” David suggested, “it’s only the behavior of a few ripe spirits who deserve to relax, making a big noise in a small place, like Ber – menzy-on-whatever-it-is?”
“Bermondsey – on Thames,” the clergyman said dryly. “Even with your overly excessive New York, really, I’d hardly call London a small place.”
“My word!” Rose said. “That’s mark one for him!”
“London?” David said. “Bermondsey?”
“My dear chap,” Beaumont said. “Bermondsey is a metropolitan borough of south London. Surely you must have heard of it. It’s in Domesday – the suffix designating the former insular, marshy character of the district, the prefix generally understood to have come from the name of the Saxon overlord, Boermond. And – no, you’ve probably never read ‘Oliver Twist’ by one of our great novelists, Charles Dickens, though he wrote illuminatingly about the States as well. However, Jacob Street in Bermondsey is the site of Jacob’s Island where Bill Sikes, one of the characters in ‘Oliver Twist’ so shockingly hanged himself. Well, the first Bermondsey was that known as the location of an Anglo-Saxon monastery and known from later charters to be the area around the post-Conquest Bermondsey Abbey and its manor, which in turn was part of the medieval parish of …”
Rose interrupted. “There’s a piece of scholarship for you,” she said. “Marks up to six for the Padre. Beetle off, Major!”
“Now, can I play too?” she said. “I hail from Great Yarmouth. It’s a big shipping and fishing port on the tail of the bunny that is the island of Great Britain. It’s location for trade and commerce has been most advantageous, lying as it does on the estuary of the rivers Yare, Bure, Waveuey and Wensum, which are all navigable to Norwich, and several market towns in the district and connected with the city by rail and steamers. Great Yarmouth forms the shape of a peninsula on which it stands and was built in the form of a long and irregular parallelogram extending upwards of a mile from north to south and half-a-mile in breadth. It was an important naval station since an early period, and in Edward III’s reign it had a large number of man-of-war ships, which, in several engagements in the 14th century, did great service to the king. Its large fleet whose sailors were experienced in naval warfare, doubtless contributing to encouraging Yarmouth ships to resort to piracy that was sometimes directed against the ships of England’s enemies but also against ships of its allies, or even English ships. An investigation in 1340 accused thirty-four or so Yarmouth ships of piracy.
“In 1101,” she continued, “the Bishop of Norwich built a chapel and then in the 1120’s founded St. Nicholas’ Church by the northern channel. I grew up just around the corner from the church. It was named for the patron saint of fishermen. I know quite a lot about the place, actually. For example, in 1296 or thereabouts, John, servant of Gilbert de Hardele, sued one Simon le Parmenter, for breach of contract for not providing a ship to carry stone to construct the church, he having already received two shillings ‘in earnest’. The plaintiff recovered, and the defendant was amerced, but …”
“And mark eight for you,” David said.
“But, Major, tell us, where are you from, New York perhaps?” Beaumont queried.
“No, Dr. Beaumont. I’m from Virginia – a small village called Greenwood in Albemarle County to be exact, near where Thomas Jefferson lived at Monticello. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He was one of our Presidents.” David said, returning an equivalent patronizing remark. ‘Tit-for-tat,’ he thought, while Beaumont lifted his eyebrows in acknowledgement of David’s obvious intent.
“Well,” David continued, “it’s sometimes called the land of fine horses and gentlemen, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. My Atwood’s were early settlers to the valley and originally operated a tavern, store, distillery and mill on Stockton Creek; they had eventually done well for themselves. Nancy Langhorne, you know her as Lady Astor, grew up on her family’s estate called Mirador, nestled in a larger green landscape of gently rolling hills made up of small forests, streams, pastures and many large farms and estates and just up the road from my home. She moved to England for some reason in 1905 and married an Englishman. But her second husband was Waldorf Astor, the 2nd Viscount Astor, who was born in New York City, Mr. Beaumont. She was once asked by an English woman, ‘Have you come to get our husbands?’ to which she replied, ‘Madam, if you knew the trouble I had getting rid of mine …’ Her older sister Irene has married Charles Dana Gibson, the artist, and became a model for his ‘Gibson Girls’, and they also lived there.”
“Impressive,” Rose said, but she hardly turned her head, David thought, and she gave him the impression of having looked swiftly from himself to Beaumont and back again to verify their difference. “Really Major,” she said, “I know you do have classes, too, in America, and it certainly sounds like it, though of course you hate to admit it. They’re everywhere – in France – here in Bruges. People, I fancy, are everywhere pretty much alike. Especially those whom you’d think it a disgustingly undemocratic phrase to call the lower class. Your friends of the street, the Street of the …?”
“The Street of the Laughing Girls,” David supplied.
She smiled. “That wasn’t the name you told me!”
“OK. The Virtuous Laughing Girls,” David said.
“You must tell Beaumont about that,” she said.
The clergyman seemed to be trying to repress his interest. David saw that “Virtuous” spiced it enough to make an explanation necessary.
But Beaumont was not amused. He seemed to be gradually stiffening, closing the door of his mind while his eyes became gelatinous. Rose, on the other hand, leaned forward, evidently absorbed with interest though it was the second telling for her, repaying David for his attempt at description.
“And you’re going to keep your promise?” she asked when he had finished. “You’re going to give them an entertainment, perhaps a dance and some small feast here at the pension?
“Really!” Beaumont said suddenly. “Has
no one wondered whether there might be an objection? I must say, I came here for a rest, I can’t afford to change my plans, since my stay is short and completely arranged. This place was recommended for its quiet. Naturally, I don’t expect this pension to be turned into a sort of night club. Really, there’d have to be a day preparing for this – thing. Then, another whole day to get back some semblance of order.”
“What difference does it make?” David protested. “If it gives these people a little pleasure? Honestly, I hadn’t thought of the inconvenience. I hadn’t even seen the pension then. Later, it never even occurred to me either you or Miss Shuttleworth would …”
“I’m all for it, really,” Rose said. “I like my fun – with some vulgarity, thank you.”
“I believe,” Beaumont said, “for sheer … I believe I should have to protest to the proprietors.”
“Now look here,” David began but halted himself.
“Finish the idea,” Rose said with cool insistence.
“It seems to me,” David said, deflecting his first roughness into more of an argument, “your objections are, well, natural – ordinarily. But just now, conditions are unusual, and I’m sure you’d be willing to make a personal sacrifice.”
“It’s not personal,” Beaumont said quickly. “I have important spiritual issues to consider while I’m here.”
“This is a spiritual issue,” David said. “A practical one.”
“Really! Who are these people?” Beaumont asked with a rising inflection.
“‘But for the grace of God’,” David began to quote and tried to switch, “people – like ourselves.”
“Really!” Beaumont said.
Rose gave David a strangely oblique smile. She seemed to be calling upon him to make further retort. “I don’t know about classes here in Bruges,” David said, “but I’d figured you belonged to what they might call the middle class in England, the lower middle maybe – tolerant, at least, to the lower …”