Cushing's Crusade

by Tim Jeal

  ‘Your brother is fucking my wife in a wood.’ He smiled for a moment but felt tears pricking beneath his lids. ‘It sounds like the first line of a bawdy poem but I’m afraid it’s true.’

  She had kissed him before he quite realized what had happened; not that he remembered it as rushed afterwards: the reverse in fact, for the kiss seemed to last for some seconds after she had moved away.

  ‘Silly her,’ she whispered.

  ‘I wasn’t appealing for compensation; a sort of quid pro quo.’

  ‘I’m not a fool,’ she said with sudden anger.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She buttoned her shirt and stood up.

  ‘We were strangers all the time,’ he said.

  ‘Come on,’ she replied. ‘Lunch, and we can’t keep Mrs Hocking waiting. We’re not strangers. We’re you and me, and I can’t think of what to say because moods come and go like the fire we lit burned and went out.’

  As they walked up the beach towards the wood she took his hand and he was sure she had made the gesture because she felt sorry for him and he cursed himself for destroying a morning he had enjoyed in spite of so much. As they walked through the wood he forgot her hand and remembered Diana. What did you do this morning, Derek? Flirted on a beach. I suppose she flirted back; as soon as one man goes she’s ready for another. Like with her husband….

  *

  Lunch was uneventful, although Derek could see that Angela was watching Charles and Diana with more attention than hitherto. Giles had found an underwater cave and wanted an aqua-lung so that he could explore it properly.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you, darling?’ said Diana.

  ‘I can hold my breath for ninety seconds so I know how long I can go down for. I count under water.’

  ‘It still sounds dangerous. Your eyes look rather bloodshot too.’

  Although she was being critical and concerned, Derek knew that she felt guilty for not being with her son; guilty because she knew that she would let him go back to his cave and not even sit on the beach watching him diving.

  Later Charles suggested that they went fishing in the bay during the afternoon.

  ‘I’ve got a motorboat; not a speedboat, I’m afraid. We should be able to catch a few mackerel.’

  ‘Just my luck to be going to Truro,’ said Derek. ‘My father’s train, you see.’ He caught Angela’s eye and looked away. ‘You’ll be going, won’t you?’ he asked Giles.

  ‘I haven’t been asked,’ the boy replied quietly.

  ‘Of course you’re coming,’ came back Charles heartily.

  ‘In case you’re thinking of asking me, don’t bother,’ said Angela.

  ‘You have more interesting plans, I suppose?’ Charles returned.

  ‘There are several things I want to buy in Truro. That’s if Derek will take me.’

  ‘Could I get them for you? Save you the journey?’ asked Derek.

  ‘I’ll have to choose one or two things myself, but thanks for offering.’

  Derek and Angela had to leave before the end of the meal. As they went out Diana was laughing at an amusing anecdote about a picture framer who had gone mad.

  *

  They drove in silence along the enclosed lanes and through the woods which led down to the head of the river. The height of the hedges and the dense canopy of trees which often blotted out the sky made Derek feel claustrophobic. He had wanted time to think before being alone with Angela again. Outside in the fields or down by the sea they could have walked and looked around and silence would not have been oppressive but in the car it weighed on Derek heavily. The sun beat down on the car and sweat started to trickle down his back sticking his shirt to the plastic seat. By contrast she seemed relaxed and cool. Nearly thirty, perhaps? Twenty-six or seven anyway, but she looked a lot younger. That slight gap between her front teeth and the lack of make-up probably accounted for it. It was a long time since he had studied a female face carefully. He liked the way little brackets formed round the edges of her mouth when she smiled and the way her cornflower-coloured eyes narrowed. Her slightly turned-up nose gave her an almost insolent look, which he had once thought sullen but now found amusing. She didn’t comb her hair much but in her man’s shirt and rough jeans it gave her a pleasantly windswept appearance. Not beautiful, perhaps, her cheekbones were a little too broad, but not far off it. And him? An ill-assorted couple, the two of them. From the front his hair wasn’t too bad, but it was very thin at the back and another year or two and it would be worse. Until his late twenties he had never worn glasses unless he had to, for films, plays, driving a car; now he wore them all the time and had done for years. He wasn’t fat and although Diana thought his legs too short for his body, it wasn’t a criticism that previous girl friends had made. Two years before at the Institute a young American postgraduate had seemed interested for a few months, had offered to help him tidy up and take manuscript boxes down to the archives, but nothing had happened; there had been no furtive embraces behind the stacks of missionary correspondence, no impropriety in the archives. A perfect place which he had never thought of using. Come and see my manuscripts were words which had remained unspoken through the years.

  ‘You didn’t want me to come, did you?’ she asked as they passed the reeds and mudflats at the head of the river.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Come on. You wouldn’t have offered to save me the trouble of coming by buying what I wanted for me.’ She gave a sniff of mock grief and added, ‘Now would you?’

  ‘Do you suppose,’ asked Derek, pointing at a distant bird sitting on one of the blackened ribs of a rotting boat, ‘that we are looking at a lesser-spotted grebe or a crested peewit?

  ‘My supposition is that you’re changing the subject and being facetious.’

  Derek felt suddenly irritated. Why should he tell her what he thought? Honesty was an amusing game for a time but making a habit of it was a different matter. Fine for her to amuse herself by cross-examining him when she was so utterly uninvolved. Up to now Derek had not taken against Angela because she was Charles’s sister. Suddenly he felt irritated by this relationship.

  ‘You wanted to come so that you could ask me more about Charles and Diana. Mind you, I don’t altogether blame you; it can’t be everyday that one comes across a husband who takes his holidays with his wife and her lover; and after all, you must have thought, with the vision of your delightful boobs still burning in my brain, that I would tell all without any further asking, in the hope of having another visual treat.’

  ‘You flatter yourself. I didn’t want to spend an afternoon afloat with Mrs Cushing, Master Cushing and my brother. The alternarives were loafing about on my own or coming with you. I enjoyed this morning so I opted for a trip to Truro.’

  They drove on in silence and were soon on a main road driving along the barren central spine of the county. They passed a granite quarry, the ruined engine houses of several tin mines and ugly little groups of bungalows. To the south-east the sun picked out the strange white pyramids of china-clay waste, making them shine like distant snow. Since he did not wish to talk about himself, he told her about his father; a necessary chore since she would soon be meeting him. He explained briefly about his work in Malaya and then about Gilbert Cushing’s current personal interest in the years immediately preceding the fall of Singapore. Since the subject would have been meaningless without it, Derek mentioned his mother’s death and his own lucky escape.

  ‘Do you remember much?’ Angela asked in a hushed and gentle voice.

  Derek thought she was looking at him with greater interest now that she knew he had suffered as a child. For a moment he was tempted to play along with her and paint lurid pictures of a sky black with Japanese bombers and three weeks at sea on a small life-raft waiting for rescue, but instead he said brightly, ‘I was a boy hero; brought down five Jap planes with my catapult.’ He smiled. ‘No, I left before the last week when it all started happening. There was bombing, no worse
than in London, except in Singapore people used to rush out to look at the planes. Lots of black smoke; a direct hit on the oil tanks at the harbour. The shops were open, hotels functioning normally, water in the taps. I missed the looting and the unburied corpses. The ship I was in wasn’t dive-bombed. The last time I saw my mother was waiting in a mile-long queue outside the shipping manager’s bungalow. She was trying to get a passage for her parents. I don’t remember crying at all.’ A long silence and Angela looking at him with solemn sympathy.

  ‘Did your father remarry?’ she asked at last.

  ‘He did. She died a year ago of cancer of the colon.’ Derek’s tone had been detached, light and ironic. He had wanted to avoid melodrama and false emotion by being matter-of-fact, and yet the result disgusted him. He wanted to answer again and do it properly and honestly, but the time had passed. They were entering Truro.

  According to Derek’s watch, they were no more than ten minutes late at the station, but there was no sign of his father either in the booking-hall or on the platform. Since Gilbert often failed to keep appointments, Derek did not think it worth waiting for the next train. His father might come the following day; he might even have caught an earlier train. The only rational thing to do was to drive to the Three Pilchards at St Mabyn, where Derek had booked a room for his father. He could then find out if Gilbert had cancelled, and, if he hadn’t, leave a note for him. St Mabyn was only five miles from Charles’s house, so the detour would cause little trouble.

  They were leaving the town when Angela asked him to tell her about his Malayan childhood and so Derek obligingly extracted little vignettes for her: the Tamil ayah, who looked after him till he was six; Ngah, the gardener, who had hated pulling up cabbages because he thought them more beautiful than other more familiar plants; and Che’ Sulong, the syce, who drove the Humber in spite of being cross-eyed. There were animals, like his pet armadillo, the house itself with its polished teak verandah and the bamboo blinds in the nursery that rattled like castanets when a ‘sumatra’ was blowing. Angela seemed disappointed. Derek supposed she had wanted him to talk about his mother.

  *

  A sunny June morning in 1942. Derek and his father eating breakfast in a Battersea flat. Gilbert saying, ‘Don’t look so glum. The Japs aren’t as bad as they’re painted. Most of it’s just propaganda.’

  Gilbert didn’t give up hope of his wife’s ship having reached Java till late in August. By then the news of atrocities in Hong Kong and Singapore had been confirmed. Derek had been sent away to school in the country to be out of the bombing during term-time. One holiday his father had bought a packet of seeds of the coleus plant, Derek’s mother’s favourite on account of its beautifully coloured leaves. The seeds had been placed by the sunniest window in the house but had failed to germinate. No news came and letters which Gilbert had sent to Java were returned unopened. Derek imagined her being tortured; to hear she was dead would have been a relief.

  Early in 1943 Gilbert had met Margaret, or that was when Derek had first seen her. One day he saw them kissing. What would happen if they fell in love? Would Derek be sent away? Fear made him conciliatory. He tried too hard to be friendly to Margaret. She found his efforts embarrassing, especially when he had tried to make her laugh. He believed she resented him being around; his relationship with her was one long apology for existing.

  Three days after his tenth birthday Derek heard that his mother was dead. No tears at all; in four years she had died too many times already. Just a chill, numbed feeling, more anger than grief.

  ‘You’ll marry Margaret, I suppose,’ he said to his father, more as a statement of fact than as a question. Gilbert had shaken his head and mumbled about having no plans.

  ‘But you will, you will,’ Derek had shouted. Later he apologized and tried to pretend he wanted Margaret as a step-mother. When he did finally break down and cry, it was more for himself than for his mother. She was dead, but he had to face the future. In retrospect he was sorry for his father, who had felt obliged to postpone his second marriage for almost two years.

  *

  They had been silent for half an hour when they reached the point where they had to turn off the main road and thread their way through the network of narrow lanes that led to the river. Derek felt that he ought to make conversation but couldn’t think of what tone to adopt. Thinking about the past no longer pained him, but memories could still lead to depression. He could see Angela smiling at him.

  ‘Do you know those large gorillas,’ she said, ‘that chatter like mad and leap about crazily for a while and then sit down for hours, without moving, looking constipated?’

  ‘I look just like one. Many thanks. My hairy hands on the wheel, my tiny black eyes darting back and forth and my jaws working a mouthful of orange peel.’ When Angela laughed, he felt better at once. Absurd to be so easily restored by a bit of female laughter. He shook his head. ‘I know what you mean but I’m more like a car with faulty plugs; sometimes I fire on all cylinders and sometimes I won’t start at all.’ He gave her a long mournful look. ‘A man haunted at times by an inexpressible melancholy, he seemed like a prisoner trapped deep within himself in a dark region far beyond rescue.’

  She was looking at him with such amused tenderness that he found it hard to believe he was the cause of it. But who else? Diana rarely laughed at or reacted to what he said.

  ‘I was wrong about gorillas,’ Angela said seriously. ‘You’re more like a sad teddy bear.’

  Derek’s elation vanished. A teddy bear. That fey toy. Could ever an animal be more impotent? More harmless and futilely good-natured? Taken to bed by children and trusted to do nothing naughty with the dolls or golliwogs. No hybrids in the nursery. A far cry from frozen pine forests. Perhaps the description was apt. Hair falling out in chunks, becoming worn and tired, far from new—definitely a used bear, ill-used.

  ‘One glass eye and my stuffing coming out. I’d rather be a gorilla any day. Imagine being able to snarl and gnash one’s teeth as they do. They look unhappy all right but I wouldn’t mind being able to vent my rage like they do, hurling myself about against the walls and beating my chest.’

  ‘I suppose it might be rather impressive.’

  ‘Of course it would. Imagine Diana’s face if I told her that I knew and then started bouncing myself off the walls and thrusting whole apples into my mouth.’ Angela laughed. ‘Of course I’d be put down humanely. It’s one of the major evils of modern life, you see, no rituals for anger and grief. Nobody tears their hair any more or covers themselves with ashes. Once they respected that sort of thing. I haven’t got a bible in the car but my memory’s not too bad. “He stripped off his clothes and prophesied before Samuel and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say: Is Saul also among the prophets?”’

  Derek pulled out to overtake a bread van and narrowly missed the travelling library coming in the opposite direction.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Killed by several tons of Enid Blytons. A nice death for an archivist.’

  Derek gave her a fleeting smile but did not laugh. The night before she had seen him as an aggressive pedant but now he had become the comic teddy-bear archivist whose wife mucked him around, whose father couldn’t even arrive on the right train.

  ‘You find archivists funny?’ he asked.

  ‘When they’re killed by travelling libraries I might briefly enjoy the irony of it.’

  ‘You needn’t be apologetic about it. They are funny and slightly pathetic. There’s very little use in guarding, sifting and cataloguing huge quantities of documents.’

  Angela gave him a puzzled look. ‘Historical facts aren’t trivial.’

  ‘Documents aren’t facts,’ he replied, recognizing and regretting his fastidious tone, but then feeling the need to justify it. ‘Historians analyse a number of documents and deduce facts from them. Archivists just catalogue and describe. Documents without historians are so much lumber to stuff attics with.’ />
  ‘What are historians without documents?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Out of a job,’ he conceded.

  ‘Charles said you’re doing some big research job.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘That you were considered brilliant when you …’

  ‘When I was younger?’ he cut in. ‘Since I can’t easily draw conclusions from the evidence of my own life, Charles is a liar.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ she asked with a hint of a smile.

  ‘You’re making fun of me,’ he replied.

  They were passing the mudflats at the head of the river, but now they were almost entirely covered by the tide. The fire they had lit before lunch would be several feet under water.

  ‘As though I need to make fun of you,’ She laughed. ‘I’ve never met anybody who makes so many jokes against himself. Give him a knife and he stabs himself in the back even when his hands are tied.’ Her amusement had gone and he could sense her concern and sympathy. It made him feel angry, just as her faultless analysis of his acquiescence and self-mockery had done a moment before. Did he make himself that obvious? As he changed down for a sharp corner, he felt her hand on his.

  ‘I didn’t mean to annoy you.’

  ‘Are my moods so transparent?’

  ‘No, just your efforts to conceal them.’

  ‘Did Colin like your honesty?’ he asked viciously.

  ‘You shouldn’t be unkind about him,’ she replied with a frown.

  ‘Why not? He’s ten years younger than me, with no erring wife or thinning hair. I don’t feel obliged to be nice.’

  ‘No, Colin didn’t care for honesty. He’s rather a hypocrite.’

  ‘Did that annoy you?’

  ‘Hypocrisy’s no worse than bad breath.’

  ‘Bad breath isn’t incurable. I had pyorrhoea, so I ought to know.’

  She shook her head and smiled sadly. ‘Another sharp, self-inflicted stab in the back. Why should I pay good money to be whipped when I whip myself so nicely?’

  Derek tried to laugh but was surprised to feel tears coming. Tears on such a sunny afternoon? They had just passed a signpost and he had not seen it properly. He reversed back towards it. The place indicated was called Tresithian. He started searching through his road map as though his life depended on it. ‘The last village we went through was Faddon. Another couple of miles on this road and we’ll be at St Mabyn. He probably won’t be there, and if he ever was, he won’t be still, and either way we’ll have gone for nothing.’