The Holm Oaks

by P. M. Hubbard

  We walked up the path, my wife and I, arm in arm and moved by a single thought, thrown for a second time into a sort of spurious intimacy by a common concern for some trees which we valued for different reasons and a woman she did not know I loved. When we got to the house, she said, ‘Better have some lunch first. You’ll fight better if you’re fed. I’ll get something quickly.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a fight I’ve got on my hands. He’s got the whip hand, after all. All I can do is to appeal to his better feelings, and I don’t suppose for a moment he’s got any. But mainly it’s exploratory. I must penetrate that smooth black shell and see what makes him tick. If I can only find out why he’s doing it, we might think of some counter-move that would at any rate stall him off a bit. If he’s got a reason, the thing is at least arguable. It’s wanton destruction that’s so difficult to deal with.’

  I ate with very little stomach the cold meal Elizabeth put out for me. Then I walked out of the gate and into the wood. The wind buffeted me in the open ground between. The trees at the western edge leant over and lashed their tops about more than I had ever seen them, but the wood itself stood solid and unmoved, and before I was thirty yards inside it the wind was a noise in the leaves above me, and the roar of the sea had been drowned by the noise of the wind in the leaves. It was very dark. I hurried along the path, obsessed with the secrecy and separateness of the world under the trees, even though today it held no promise for me. I thought of the younger Barrett, with his red face and his machinery, bringing in the daylight and the incessant voice of the sea, and found the thought intolerable.

  There was no one about on the road or in the garden of the red house. I went up the steps and pressed a bell-push by the side of the door. I do not know what I expected to happen. The whole place and occasion seemed irretrievably unreal. Carol came to the door, and I said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Wainwright. Is your husband at home?’ It was not only a matter of looking like strangers. We were strangers, unrecognisable to each other in the harsh light of an alien reality.

  She said, ‘I think he’s in the study. Will you come in?’

  I followed her through the hall and along a passage. We did not touch or have a word of comfort for each other. She knocked on a shut door, opened it and said, without putting her head in, ‘Mr Haddon’s here.’ Then she stood back and I went in.

  Of all things in the world, the first thing I thought of was to wonder what this great bony man was doing in here all by himself. There was nothing to do anything with. The room was as dark and neat and uncommunicative as he was. If he had any personal possessions, he did not leave them about. If he had hobbies or occupations, the gear he worked with was all put away. It was as impersonal as the old-fashioned dentist’s waiting-room and had something of the same smell. The second thing I remember was a small shock of surprise, almost, in a perverse way, of disappointment, that this bogy we had built up was so ordinary. He was coiled down in a hard upright chair facing an empty desk. His height, which made him formidable on his feet, went against him like this. He was very slightly ridiculous. He might even have been pathetic, but before I could think so, he smiled, and all my revulsion came back. He did not say anything, but I had not thought he would.

  I said, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Wainwright. I came to see you because I understand you are proposing to cut down the wood. It may not be true, of course, but I thought I’d like to know one way or the other.’

  His expression did not change at all. He was still smiling, but very slightly. He said, ‘Who told you this, Mr Haddon?’

  ‘Your contractor, or rather his man. I saw him in his van along the side of the wood. As he was on my private road, I naturally asked him what he was doing.’

  ‘And he told you they were going to cut down the wood?’

  ‘Strictly speaking, he referred me to Mr Barrett, and Mr Barrett told me.’

  ‘Where did you see Mr Barrett?’

  ‘In Burtonbridge, at his office.’

  ‘You went into Burtonbridge specially to make this enquiry? It did not occur to you to come here?’

  ‘In fact, I was on my way into Burtonbridge when I saw the man. At his suggestion I called on Mr Barrett when I got there. This was this morning. I have come to see you as soon as I got home.’

  All this time I was standing. There was one other chair in the room. It would have been described in the catalogue as an easy chair, but that was as far as the thing went. It was of dark varnished wood with grained imitation leather upholstery that looked as repellent physically as it was aesthetically. The chair was heavy and away in a far corner. If Mr Wainwright took his ease in it, he must take it where he found it. He did not invite me to do so, nor in fact had I much inclination that way. I stood there in front of his desk, looking down at him coiled in his upright chair. There was no moral advantage in it either way.

  He said, ‘Well, Mr Haddon, what do you want me to say?’ He was still smiling that small slightly uneasy smile, as though I had surprised him in some mildly embarrassing occupation, which he nevertheless enjoyed and insisted on pursuing.

  ‘I want you to tell me the real position,’ I said. ‘What I should like you to say, of course, is that you have no intention of interfering with the wood at all. But if you have, I naturally want to know what your intentions are.’

  He lowered his head at that and looked at me under his rather tufted brows and bony forehead. He said, ‘Interfere? What do you mean, interfere? It’s my wood, isn’t it? The interference is not on my side, Mr Haddon.’

  I forgot my repugnance in my desperate need to establish some communication with him. I put my hands on the front of his empty desk and leant forward, so that my face was within a yard of his. ‘But the wood is there in its own right,’ I said. ‘It was there before you were here. It will be there after you are dead, if you will only leave it alone. It is alive itself and has a right to go on living. You can’t cut down a tree, let alone a whole wood, as if you were knocking down a breeze-block garage.’

  I knew as I said it that this was all wrong. I had not meant to declare my interest in this way, or certainly not to start with. It is no good opening negotiations with a declaration of irreconcilable fundamentals. He shook his head in very nearly honest bewilderment.

  ‘The wood is mine,’ he said again. ‘I bought it from your uncle before I even knew you existed. It is solely for me to decide what to do with it.’

  He had stopped smiling now. His eyes, grey and enormous and wide open, stared up into mine and his mouth was very slightly open.

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘Why did you buy it? You paid a very full price for it. I don’t know what your contract with Barretts’ is, but you won’t see your money back this way. Even as a straight matter of business, it would pay you to work on the wood before you sell anything. Or did you buy it simply in order to destroy it?’

  He made a slight, unattractive sound in his throat, as if he was trying to swallow with his mouth open. He did not say anything, but shook his head very slowly from side to side. He did not take his eyes off mine. I said, ‘Why do you want to destroy it? What good is it going to do you? I can’t understand. Have you any other use for the land?’

  He went on shaking his head slowly. It did not express any particular negative so much as the fundamental variance of our points of view. He said, ‘You didn’t know your uncle at all well, I think, Mr Haddon?’

  ‘I didn’t know him at all.’

  ‘No. Well. I knew him fairly well. He had no great love for the wood, I think.’

  ‘Or for anything else, by all accounts.’

  ‘No? That’s a possible view, I suppose. But he wouldn’t part with the wood until he knew he was dying. By then he knew me well enough to let me have it.’

  ‘But why did you buy it?’

  He put his hands on the table, only a very little distance from mine. They were large white square hands, but as neutral as the rest of him. He began to get up. ‘I bought it because it was there, Mr Ha
ddon. I could not leave it there, not like that, in anyone else’s hands. I am destroying it for the same reason – because it is there. I am not interested in the financial aspects of the thing at all. So there is really nothing you can do. Perhaps if you had never come—’

  He was looking down at me now. I said, ‘If I were to go away, leave the Holt House altogether—’

  He shook his head decisively at that. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Much too late in the day. Whatever you did now, I should not leave a tree standing. I cannot have it there any longer.’

  I saw his eyes turn towards the door before I heard, at any rate consciously, what made him do it. There was an impatient tap-tap of a woman’s heels in the hall and someone put a hand on the door handle. I looked back at Dennis Wainwright and saw him for a moment, half in profile, as he stared at the door. His whole face was clotted with speechless fury. It was quite pale, but the eyes protruded and the underlip jutted savagely. Then he flicked his eyes sideways at me, and for a moment longer we stared at each other, both in our opposite ways obsessed with the person we expected and both almost clinically interested in each other’s obsession. We were still looking at each other when the door opened and Elizabeth came in.

  It is the standard comment, but would not be strictly true, to say that I do not know which of us was the more surprised. As a matter of fact, I know quite well. He was. I at least knew who Elizabeth was, and although this move on her part was certainly unexpected, it did not take me very long to see it as at least partly in character. Dennis Wainwright had never seen Elizabeth at all. He had to get over the shock of the extreme physical divergence from what he expected and then make up his mind who she was. It was all a matter of split seconds, of course. But for an almost measurable time he was completely at a loss.

  She hardly looked at me. She walked straight up to him and stood facing him, on his side of the desk. She meant to look, and succeeded in looking, extremely appealing. She said: ‘Mr Wainwright? Mr Wainwright, won’t you please reconsider your decision about the wood? Couldn’t you at least postpone it? It means so much to me.’

  He looked down at her upturned face for quite a while before he half turned to me. He said, ‘Your wife, Mr Haddon?’ Then his eyes went back to Elizabeth, and quite suddenly he grinned. It was totally unexpected and rather horrifying. I had only seen him smile his small smile before, but when he uncovered his teeth like this, they were the darkest part of his face. All the rest was grey and white, but the teeth were large, regular, shining and quite a dark yellow. The pair of them made a remarkable picture, there on the far side of the empty desk. Elizabeth, as I have already had occasion to say, could still pass for a beautiful woman, and was all pink and gold. The odd thing was that, for all he gave me the horrors, Dennis Wainwright, when he was on his feet, was an impressive looking creature. I knew for an absolute certainty that Elizabeth was doing this deliberately, but I could see the waves passing between them, and I knew that Elizabeth would tell me afterwards, despite my warning, that he was rather charming. Meanwhile he grinned at her and said, ‘I had not expected to find you among the wood’s defenders, Mrs Haddon. My wife is a regular devotee, and so, I believe, is your husband. I had not somehow imagined—’

  ‘It’s the birds, Mr Wainwright. That is my great interest. You have some very rare species there. One at least that has not been observed in this part of the country for quite a time. If you could at least give me time to complete my observations, that would be something saved at any rate. Can’t I persuade you?’

  He shook his head at her. He was smiling his more ordinary smile now. He was completely oblivious of my presence, and I had a sudden, certain conviction that he enjoyed shaking his head at Elizabeth much more than he enjoyed shaking it at me.

  ‘Bird-watching?’ he said. ‘I had not imagined the wood’s attractions were so various. No, Mrs Haddon. I have just told your husband that no decision on his part could make me change my mind. I will not have the wood there any longer. The birds can go elsewhere. They cannot, certainly, be breeding any longer.’ He half grinned at her again. ‘I know something about the local birds myself,’ he said. ‘I knew we had our rarities, though I must confess I did not know of anything as compelling as you suggest. But I’m afraid that must take its chance along with the rest.’

  Elizabeth no longer had her head tilted back. She had drawn in her chin while he was speaking and was looking at him now fixedly from under her eyebrows. I wondered where I had seen that fixed, deadly stare before, and remembered that it was a trick of Stella’s I had not up to then observed in Elizabeth. I knew she was blindingly angry, and I did not, on previous experience, think it best for her to vent her anger here. I walked across to the door and opened it. Unexpectedly, Elizabeth seemed perfectly aware of what I had done. She turned her back on Dennis Wainwright and went out of the room. She did not stamp out, but went with a curiously deliberate, almost mincing gait, as if she was conscious at each step what she was putting her foot on.

  I nodded, ‘I’m sorry to have taken up your time, Mr Wainwright,’ I said, and he nodded back. His eyes had followed Elizabeth out of the door, and we both heard the front door shut before either of us moved.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I do not think, looking back, that I ever spoke to Dennis Wainwright again, except on one occasion. I certainly had no further direct contact with him during the next few days, despite the fact that they were almost wholly occupied with an intensive struggle to defeat his purpose and save the oak wood. But it was all done at second-hand, as we brought our heavy guns to bear, one after the other, on the enemy position. I knew his side of it only so far as I could get it from Carol.

  I went out of the house leaving him in his dark, stale-smelling study, and saw nobody anywhere. Elizabeth must have left almost at the run, and probably went home along the beach. I know she did not go through the wood, and if she had taken the track on the north side, she would still have been on the road when I left the Wainwrights’ gate. I myself went as I had come, through the wood, and found Carol waiting for me at a turn of the path.

  I said, ‘Did you see Elizabeth?’

  ‘Elizabeth? No. Was she there?’

  ‘She came a few minutes after me. She came straight to the study. I wondered whether you had shown her in.’

  She shook her head. ‘I came out here as soon as you went in. But I think she knows where the study is – I think I told her this morning. And she would have heard your voices from the hall. What happened, Jake?’

  ‘Nothing. I asked him politely and Elizabeth asked him pathetically. I pleaded for the trees and she pleaded for the birds. He said he didn’t mind where the birds went. He wanted the trees down and didn’t care about the money or anything else. That was when I pointed out that he’d lose money by cutting now.’

  ‘It’s not true, you know. Money is almost incredibly important to him. I think it’s true that he’s prepared to face a loss, on balance, over the wood, but if somebody offered him an enormous sum to save the trees, or threatened him with enormous penalties if he cut them down, I don’t believe for a moment that he’d go on with it.’

  ‘I can’t offer him an enormous sum, unfortunately. In any case, it would have to be phenomenally large before he accepted it from me. I don’t know about penalties. That’s one of the things I’ve got to look into, if we’re going to go on fighting the thing. But there’s so little time.’

  We had been walking slowly along the path with our eyes mostly on the ground. I think we were holding hands. But now I stopped and swung her round to face me. I said, ‘Carol, let’s not fight it. It’s nothing compared with the main issue. Will you leave your husband and come with me? Elizabeth can have the house. Perhaps if we’re gone, he won’t be so bent on destroying the wood. Carol, beloved, will you come? I don’t see what else we can do. Trees or no trees, we can’t go on as we are.’

  For a moment she leant against me. Her face was turned down and I could see only the top of he
r dark head. I believed I could feel the throb of the veins in her temples as she rested her head against me, but it must really have been my own heart. As soon as she looked up I knew it was no use. Her face was immensely grave, and she was full of the in-turned, withdrawn quality I had seen so much of when I first knew her. Whatever kind of a hell she was in, it was her private hell. She did not expect me to pull her out of it, and made no pretence of being able to do much for me so long as she was in it. She said, ‘We can’t go on as we are.’

  This was an entirely new statement. The fact that I had myself just used the same words meant nothing at all. Whether or not she had heard me say them, she now spoke out of her private hell with an authority which I could not question, but which chilled me to the heart. ‘And I can’t go away with you because of Elizabeth. I think you know that yourself.’

  I said, ‘But you don’t like Elizabeth.’ I knew it was foolish as I said it, but I did not expect the violence with which she threw it back at me.

  ‘Of course I don’t like her. But we can’t get away from her. If she were to leave you, it would be all right. But she’s not going to, not Elizabeth. She’s perfectly happy as she is, and she’d be very unhappy without you. Particularly if you’d gone off with the brunette next door. Therefore you can’t get away from her, Jake my dear, not you. And if you can’t, we can’t. I’m not going to compete with a mournful Elizabeth at the other end of the pillow. And as it’s that or nothing, it will have to be nothing, won’t it?’

  She pushed herself away from me to arms’ length, and for a long time we looked at each other as if we had never seen each other before. In a sense I believe we never had. She was exercising to the full the woman’s dreadful ability to make a man feel young, ignorant and irresponsible in these matters. I do not for a moment believe that she wanted, consciously, to make me feel young, ignorant and irresponsible but she was full of the vast female gravity before which the man’s sick heartache takes on the temporary tolerability of indigestion and seems almost equally undignified. I have never known, and probably never shall know, whether a woman really gets hurt more than a man. I find it, in my more cautious moments, difficult to reconcile with that superior nervous toughness which keeps her going, time and again, when the weaker vessel cracks. But there is no doubting her conviction of deeper suffering or her ability to communicate it, at any rate temporarily, to her partner.