B-Berry and I Look Back

by Dornford Yates

  “I find it remarkable,” said Jonah. “Did Dickens write like that?”

  “How can I tell?” said I. “I have a feeling that Maurice Hewlett did. The Forest Lovers always suggests to me the same technique. I may be wrong, of course; but I always feel that, when Prosper le Gai rode forth to seek his fortune, Hewlett had no idea what fortune he was going to find. The dovetailing is so perfect that I simply cannot believe that that magnificent story was ever thought out.”

  “A book so written is better than other books?”

  “You can’t expect me to say that. But that technique does work.”

  Jonah leaned forward.

  “Your sub-conscious brain must see the book as a whole.”

  “I’m forced to that conclusion. Again and again I have recorded an incident to which at the time I attached no importance at all, which, many pages later, has played a big part in the tale. To be honest, in the old days when some reviewer was kind enough to say that the story had been ‘well worked out’, I used to feel ashamed – for I hadn’t worked it out.”

  “Your sub-conscious brain had.”

  “I suppose it must have: but it took care to keep me in the dark.”

  10

  “I once had,” said Berry, “a most painful experience. It was in no way my fault, although I occasioned it. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to anyone. But to this day its memory makes me feel cold. It won’t upset you, for you didn’t suffer it. But I think it will interest you. So here we go.

  “You may remember that early in the first war two volumes of our set of Punch were damaged by water from a burst pipe.”

  “Both 1847,” said Daphne. “You got replacements in the end.”

  Berry nodded.

  “But not for some years. Nothing, of course, could be done till after the war. And then I began to try. Advertisement proved hopeless, but since, if we couldn’t get them, the whole of our set was spoiled, I felt that something must be done.”

  “Very difficult,” said I. “Original publisher’s cloth.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Berry. “And a lot of good you were. Said your job was to write books, not to seek them. And Jonah was after some thug in the worst of France. Any way, I started in.

  “Somebody advised me to try a bookshop south of the river. This was, I think, about 1923. Well, I had the address and one afternoon I set forth. I found the shop, a sprawling, rambling place, with a very jovial fellow of about my age in charge. Not at all like the traditional bookseller. Big, broad, well-covered and full of fun: jesting with his assistants and using their Christian names. And they were all laughing. I’ll say it did me good to enter that shop. He’d fought, of course – a sergeant in the —s. And I’ll lay he was a good sergeant and pulled far more than his weight. We were very soon changing hats. But he knew his job all right. Sergeant or no, he was a bookseller now.

  “Well, he had a lot of ‘Punches’ which he had bought as job lots, with the idea of meeting such demands as mine. He and I went through them together, talking all the time and remembering other days. But the ones we needed weren’t there. There were scores of volumes and many duplicates; but Numbers Twelve and Thirteen were not among them. At last he pushed back his hat. ‘Everything else,’ he said, ‘and that’s so often the way. But I’ve got some more in a garage – say, five minutes’ walk. Shall we have a look there?’ ‘I’d be more than content,’ I said, so off we went. When I saw the stacks of ‘Punches’, I thought we were home. So we were – halfway. The last volume which I picked up was Number Twelve. But Number Thirteen wasn’t there. I paid what he asked for Twelve, but that was little enough. And I was rather upset, for he’d taken no end of trouble. But when I said as much, he clapped me upon the back. ‘That’s all right, sir,’ he laughed. ‘I’ll have it next time you come. You must give me a chance, you know. Come back in six months.’ ‘If the pubs were open,’ I said, ‘I’d ask you to have a drink.’ ‘We’ll wait till we find it,’ he said, ‘and then we’ll have one or two.’ Then we shook hands and parted.

  “It must have been eighteen months before I went back again. You know how it is – you remember and then you forget; and then you remember again when you’re out of Town. However, at last I got there, on a dull November evening…

  “I’d been looking forward to seeing my jovial friend again, and paid my visit late, for I meant him to have his drink. But the moment I entered the shop, I saw that it had changed hands. It was ill-lit, dingy and cheerless. From being gay, the atmosphere was depressing. More. The definite air of dejection hit me between the eyes. I very nearly withdrew – I wish I had.

  “I was the only customer. As the door closed behind me, a hang-dog assistant came forward. ‘Yes?’ he said listlessly. I glanced to where an older man was sitting in half an office, marking a catalogue. ‘Can I see the manager?’ I said. Without a word, he turned, slouched to the office and spoke to the older man. After a minute or two the latter got up and came forward. He was, to the life, the elderly, dry-as-dust bookseller of fiction; spare, with a stoop, crabbed, peering over his spectacles, poking his head, less content with my company than he would have been with my room. ‘Yes?’ he said, testily. ‘I’ve been here before,’ I said. ‘A year ago last May, in search of a volume of Punch. They hadn’t got it then, but the manager suggested that I should come back later and that in the meantime–’ ‘I remember you,’ said the man. ‘I took you up to the garage… No, it hasn’t come in.’

  “I stared upon him in silence. He just peered back. I couldn’t speak; but, as I put out my hand, he turned and went back to his office. In silence, I looked at the assistant. His eyes were upon the ground. So I turned, too, and made my way out of the shop.”

  “My God,” said Daphne, closing her eyes. “Oh, my darling, how dreadful.”

  “It was devastating,” said Berry. “I don’t know how I got home. You see, I was unready. I was disappointed, for I thought the shop had changed hands. And then, without any warning, Tragedy threw down her mask and opened her cloak to show her nakedness.” He put a hand to his head. “It was a most dreadful occasion. And the awful thing was that, by failing to recognize my poor friend, I had turned the knife in the wound… I sometimes wonder if I should have followed when he left me and said how shocked I was: but I think he had seen my hand before he turned, and wished for no intrusion on his adversity. Besides, I was greatly shaken.”

  “As,” said Jonah, “anyone would have been. Oh, no. You were right to go. You couldn’t have done any good. Whatever could have happened to wreak such a terrible change?”

  “I dare not think,” said Berry. “The poor fellow was transformed. He had shrunk in person and presence. His cast of countenance was quite different. In eighteen months he had aged, say, thirty-six years. He bore not the slightest resemblance to the man I had met before. What was, if possible, more painful, his infectious joie de vivre had been supplanted by a blank despondency. I can only suppose that he had become the prey of some shocking disease which had ravaged not only his body but also his soul. But I would give a very great deal not to have dealt that most unfortunate man yet another blow.”

  Jill was on her knees by his side.

  “Darling,” she said, “don’t look at it like that. The same blow must have been dealt him again and again. And he was to blame – not you. He needn’t have said who he was. You wouldn’t have done such a thing. But suffering had made him bitter, and so he did. I expect he’s dead long ago, and now he’s happy again. Tragedy often splurges, because it knows it’s got such a short time to go.”

  Berry picked up her hand, looked at it for a moment and then put it up to his lips.

  “Can anyone tell me,” he said, “where we should be—”

  “No,” said everyone.

  Jill went quickly to Daphne and put an arm round her neck.

  “You taught me,” she said. “You’ve taught me everything.”

  “Honours are even,” said Jonah. “I think that calls for
a drink.” He rose to fetch the decanter… When he had charged our glasses, he raised his own. “To our incomparable petticoats.”

  As, flushed with pleasure, Jill took her seat by my side –

  “I feel,” said Berry, “ that your cask of legal reminiscence has not yet run dry.”

  I sighed.

  “Its level is low,” I said. “But I do remember a case of a death-bed Will.”

  “Come on. Let’s have it,” said Jonah.

  “What’s a death-bed Will, darling?”

  “It’s a Will that is made by someone who is actually ill in bed, whose illness is their last illness. Such Wills are naturally scrutinized.

  “Now I was not in the case – in fact I was still at Oxford: but Coles Willing took me to hear it, because he knew that I was to go to the Bar. He was very good like that. It was thanks to him that I saw the old Old Bailey and much else to do with the Law that very few of my legal contemporaries have seen, because it had disappeared before they were ‘called’. I can’t remember when he first took me into the Courts, but I must have been still at Harrow, for all the ‘silks’ were then QCs – a KC had never been dreamed of for more than sixty years. I remember Willes, J and Lord Justice Rigby. The latter was too old to be there and his demeanour was painful to behold. He took no part in the proceedings, but just sat staring before him with a fallen jaw. And in the case of which I’m going to tell you, I saw two famous men, whom I never saw again.

  “The queer thing was that it wasn’t Coles Willing’s case: but he knew a great deal about it – and more than some, for he had known the testatrix in other days, and he was a personal friend of one of her Trustees.

  “What happened was this.

  “A widow had died shortly after making a Will. The executors of a Will which she had made twenty years before were not satisfied that she was fit to make a new Will at the time at which the new Will was made, so they entered a caveat. This meant that the new Will could not be proved, until a Judge had pronounced in its favour. And the executors of the earlier Will were petitioning the Court to pronounce in favour of their Will, instead. So the case came to be tried.

  “And now I must throw back a little.

  “A good many years ago, a very nice couple, whose name, let us say, was Druce, were living in Devonshire. They had no children and next to no relatives. But they had many friends and they entertained a good deal. They lived in very good style, which they could well afford. When the wife was only forty, her husband died. This, to her lasting grief. She sold their home and moved to and fro about England, unable to settle down. In spite of her friends’ entreaties, for thirty-five years she led this wretched existence, spending not a tenth of her income and preferring lodgings to hotels. Her friends diminished. She kept in fitful touch with a few, but they seldom knew where she was. As she grew older, rich as she was, she became obsessed with the idea that she must practise economy – that is a sad, but not uncommon, feature of cases like hers – and in the end she was staying in mean lodgings in Paddington, when she should have been the tenant of an agreeable suite at, say, the Kensington Palace Hotel.

  “Now six months before she died she engaged a paid companion, for her sight was failing and she felt that she must have someone to help her to lead her life. I saw the companion in court and was unimpressed. Be that as it may, the two were installed in comfortless rooms in Paddington when Mrs Druce was taken seriously ill.

  “The companion summoned the doctor whom the landlady employed and wired to her brother, who was a country solicitor. She did not inform Mrs Druce’s Trustees or even her Bank, although their names and addresses were available. It was, in fact, by the merest chance that one of Mrs Druce’s few friends came to the lodgings to see her two days before she died.

  “The friend – we will call her Mrs Gascoigne – was received by the companion and her brother, to both of whom she took an instant dislike. In spite of their assurances and protests, she made her way into the sick-room… Horrified at the squalor prevailing, as well as the shocking fact that the patient was unattended, though clearly in danger of death, she took immediate action. She sought and found the addresses, she wired to the two Trustees and informed the Bank. What was better still, she called in her own doctor, a man of standing and an eminent GP. As a result, within a very short time two nurses arrived, as well as all the apparatus appropriate to an illness so far advanced. One Trustee arrived the following day. But all these measures were, of course, taken too late, and on the day after that the poor lady died. Late that night, Mrs Gascoigne’s doctor informed the Trustees of the death and both arrived the next morning, after informing the deceased’s solicitors. They were met by the companion and her brother, who inquired their business…

  “One of the Trustees replied.

  “‘I am not only Mrs Druce’s Trustee. I am an executor of her Will.’

  “‘I fear you’re mistaken,’ said the brother. ‘My sister and I are the executors of her Will.’

  “‘To what Will are you referring?’

  “‘To one which I drew for her a day or two back.’

  “‘Indeed. May I see this document?’

  “‘When Probate has been granted, you will be at liberty to inspect it at Somerset House. And now perhaps you’ll excuse us, for we have much to arrange.’

  “So war was declared.

  “The Trustees instructed the solicitors who had drawn the original Will: a caveat was entered: the new Will was duly inspected and copies were obtained.

  “The new Will purported to have been signed by Mrs Druce on the day before she died, that is to say on the day after she had been visited by her efficient friend, Mrs Gascoigne. It was short, simple and straightforward; but its provisions were remarkable. By these, the doctor who had been summoned by the companion received five thousand pounds, while the companion and her brother shared the rest of Mrs Druce’s considerable fortune.”

  “Good God!” said Berry.

  “Exactly. The companion had certainly been with Mrs Druce for six months, but, looking upon the lady, I found it difficult to believe that in that short time she would have so endeared herself to any being that they would desire to enrich her to the extent of fifty thousand pounds. But that the companion’s brother, a most unprepossessing individual, whom Mrs Druce had only known for the inside of a week, should have been similarly favoured, I found still harder to credit. A sinister reason for the most handsome remuneration of the doctor, who looked to me very hang-dog, whose professional advice I would rather have died than seek, immediately presented itself.”

  “He was to swear that she was perfectly capable of making a Will?”

  “Well, it did look rather like it. Never mind. The signature of the deceased, which was undeniably shaky but did resemble her signature, had been witnessed by the two nurses who had been sent in.”

  “I never heard of anything so brazen,” said Berry.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Well, the usual procedure was followed, and the case was set down for trial. The Trustees would propound their Will, and the companion and her brother would propound theirs. And a special jury would decide between the two.

  “The case was tried by Sir Francis Jeune, later Lord St Helier, President of the Court of Probate, Divorce and Admiralty. The executors of the old Will were represented by Sir Edward Clarke, Charles Gill and Priestley: the companion and her brother, by Bargrave Deane and Barnard, whom I have mentioned before.

  “Before the case began, I was sitting with Coles Willing right in front, on the seat in front of that reserved for Queen’s Counsel, waiting for the Judge to come in, when Sir George Lewis, the famous solicitor, appeared. He had a word with Coles and then passed on to speak with Sir Edward Clarke. ‘You ought to win this case hands down,’ he said. ‘I mean to,’ said Clarke. I heard the words myself.”

  “Was Sir George concerned in the case?”

  “No. Lewis and Lewis were not concerned.”

  “Then how did
he know about it?”

  “Sir George Lewis knew everything. God knows how he was informed; but he always knew – everything. Somebody said of him once, ‘From whom no secrets are hid.’ A most remarkable man. Years afterwards I met Reginald Poole, who succeeded Sir George as head of the firm. He was such a very nice man, and a brilliant solicitor. I called him Lacey and put him in LOWER THAN VERMIN. They were a wonderful firm – for all I know, they’re a wonderful firm today. But old Sir George was a legend. I’m glad to have seen him, you know. Of course Coles told me who he was. Few people know that he made Eldon Bankes when he was at the Bar.”

  “A remarkable achievement,” said Berry.

  I laughed.

  “Bankes was a much better counsel than he was a Judge. And he had a very gentlemanly way, which made him valuable. Juries liked him.

  “Here and now let me say that I didn’t take to Clarke. He had for years, of course, been the leader of the Bar and he was undoubtedly a very eminent man. But I was disappointed. He’d a very forbidding expression and his manner was abrupt and autocratic. He was a small man and still wore the old-fashioned ‘Piccadilly weepers’, that is to say, long whiskers that hung down like twin beards on either side of his face. He always wore a grey frock-coat-suit and elastic-sided boots. Charles Gill, as you know, I came to know very well. He was already a distinguished ‘silk’ and a renowned cross-examiner. Priestley was one of the two leading juniors of the Divorce Court, and, as such, quite exceptional.”

  “A cryptic saying,” said Berry.

  “Well, those members of the Bar who practised in the Divorce Court, which was a very close borough, would seldom, if ever, have got on in the Queen’s Bench Division. I’m speaking of my day, of course. Things may have changed; but in my day they were painfully undistinguished. Priestley, however, was out of another drawer. He was very able and he had an admirable address. Had he remained in practice, he would certainly have reached the Bench, for he was a head and shoulders above any of his fellows. I admit that to rise in the Divorce Court of my day was by no means difficult, but that does not alter the fact that Priestley was outstanding.”