“Claudia, my dear,” said Eva MacQueen. “I will take Mathilde to the kitchen. You do remember Vivienne, don’t you? She is Countess Bernstog again….”
Claudia shook her head; then a gleam of recognition came into her eyes. “Yes, I remember the countess,” she said. “We were neighbours in Texas in the old days, eh Countess? Anyone within five hundred miles is a neighbour in Texas.”
These two formidable ladies locked eyes and realized that neither was going to yield an inch. Vivienne surrendered the dogthen took the lieutenant’s arm possessively. The horses neighed as the coachman urged them into the shade. Vivienne glanced at the buildings. “This always reminded me of a lodge at the viceregal park in Delhi,” said Vivienne slowly, once again locking eyes with Claudia.
Claudia decided the remark was a tribute, and the original roles were resumed. “I suppose you dropped the ‘von’ for the duration, Countess?” asked Claudia, not unkindly.
“The war is so difficult,” agreed the countess. “One is even forced to change one’s name.” She sighed at the perversity of the world. The two servants led her toward the main building, with Lieutenant Cyples at her side like an aide-de-camp.
Patrick glanced at the coachman, who was standing impassively beside his horses. “Why not feed them, then get a bite yourself somewhere?” he asked.
“I carry everything with me, young master,” answered the coachman, a smile flashing across his dark face. It was a long time since anyone called me that, thought MacQueen. His ingrained sense of the naturalness of things was more pleased than he would dare to admit. To him it was not a salutation, it was a deep chord in the universe. It contained no humility and little significance, except that two centuries of revolution have debased the courtesies of men’s relationships with one another. If the coachman had been a king, the injured young soldier would have had no trouble in addressing him as Your Majesty. But he was the coachman, and he had gently reminded MacQueen of his obligations. It was a graceful gesture, more effective than all the posturing of MacQueen’s companions.
“I have sub-let my flat at Marble Arch to an American film actor,” babbled the countess. She produced a pair of mother-of-pearl opera glasses hinged on an ebony rod, and focused them on the large menu. There was a square of surfaced concrete on the lawn between the table and the sea. It had a bandstand at one end and was surrounded by metal tables with the chairs upended on top of them. Nearby was a field of opening lily blossoms that weighted the air with aroma and induced lethargy. Patrick collected his mother from the kitchen, where the dog was growling and eating at the same time. It was firmly tethered to a garbage pail. He delivered his mother to the table, requested a club sandwich, and then went in search of a toilet. Lieutenant Cyples followed him.
“How do you like being Alice in Wonderland?” asked MacQueen, running a comb through his hair. The lieutenant flushed the toilet and joined him in front of the mirror.
“Christ!” he replied, rinsing his hands. “At one end you get your head blown off; at the other end they cut your balls off! There must be a medium ground somewhere?”
“Sure there is,” replied Patrick, looking at the badge of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. “Arrange to have a rich grandfather! Everything else is corruption. Does your father know about all of this?”
“Shit no!” said the lieutenant. “Why complicate his life? As a champion of the proletariat, he would rather see me swinging by the neck from that lighthouse than farting around with our phony countess!”
Their roles seemed oddly reversed from the experiences in Canada. Patrick was now seeing his world through a friend’s eyes, and the landscape was notably altered. In the past he had taken so much for granted, but it was now coming into focus.
“What are your duties, anyway?” asked MacQueen.
Lieutenant Cyples adjusted his tie, straightened his shoulders, and patted his stomach. “My platoon guards the dockyard,” he said. He shoved his tongue out between his long teeth and examined it in the mirror. “Twenty-four hours on and twenty-four hours off, with every other weekend. Without your mother’s dances, everyone would go crazy with boredom.”
“You are now an officer garrisoning the empire,” said MacQueen. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Presto—and you’ve got it! Don’t analyze paradise—you might find a snake in the garden.”
“Who is Jack in Ottawa? The man who evidently arranged my transfer?” asked Lieutenant Cyples as they sauntered across the lawn towards the table.
“Dad’s cousin, one of the family colonels,” answered Patrick, adjusting his checkered jacket over the sling. “He’s got a rich wife….”
The lawn was dappled with shade from the juniper-scented Bermuda cedars, and two palm trees rustled gently in the trade winds. The Union Jack stood out straight from the flagstaff of the lighthouse, and white canvass triangles speckled the opaque waters of Little Sound. They rejoined their party.
“I think Claudia waters her drinks,” said the countess with the unseeing violet eyes. “You’d better order another round.”
39
The title of “master” is a wide-embracing one. The head of a school was “headmaster” and the teachers were “masters”, whereas the pupils were also called “Master MacQueen”, or whatever the surname might have been. The master-at-arms is a disciplinary figure in the navy, whereas a skilled workman can be a master mason. A master of science is a university degree, and a master of ceremonies presides over social functions. Heirs to Scottish baronies are “masters”, and it is also the title of a boy or young man who possesses no superior title. The word “master” in terms of the household was vulgarized to “mister”.
Thus, when their old cook from St. Kitts greeted MacQueen as “Master Patrick”, she was being both affectionate and correct. Overworked and underpaid, this faithful lady had remained with them for years, and was still trying to cope with the various people presently occupying Moville. There had always been a genuine bond between her and Patrick, formed when he had been a boy. She wiped her eyes on her apron and her ebony face glowed with pleasure. “Stay where you belong,” she said, “and don’t let a lot of foreigners hurt you.”
The Australian novelist’s wife was cool and condescending—she was English—and she had two young daughters, about whom she constantly worried. She demanded privacy and remained totally self-contained, to the great relief of Eva MacQueen.
Lieutenant Cyples had mounted his bicycle to return to duty. MacQueen found a pair of swimming trunks and his old yellow terry cloth bathrobe. He decided to test his arm in the ocean; then they would decide on arrangements for the evening. Leaving his mother in her four-post cedar bed, he walked across the blistering road, down an avenue of cypresses, and between two large cactus century plants, to the beach fronting Long Bay.
The late afternoon was placid. The sea reflected the sky like a mirror in motion; David’s Head jutted towards the horizon, miles to his left. On a promontory to his right were the white roofs of the Cambridge Beaches guesthouse. The sky had clouded slightly, and even the seagulls seemed lazy in their search for prey.
Far distant cries of children at another beach were muffled, and the world seemed caught in a time of hesitation. Patrick MacQueen withdrew his feet from a pair of Mexican espadrilles, lay the yellow robe on the warm pink sand and sat down. He lit a Lucky Strike cigarette, threw the package into the sandals—along with a book of matches from the Lady Hawkins—and examined his shoulder. He had left the sling at home, but he knew that he would have to be careful. His arm was skinny and possessed very little strength.
After a few minutes to take in his surroundings, he ground his Lucky Strike in the sand and walked slowly into the salt water and waded to his waist. His white skin was already prickling from the sun, for which he had great respect. Holding his injured arm close to his side, he dove gently beneath the surface. The reaction was an explosion of pleasure throughout his entire body. Now, he felt, I have returned home. He tossed his hair above the surface in rest
rained exaltation and felt a rush of gratitude and forgiveness. It was a rebirth in God’s cosmic womb. The only witness to this baptism was a dive-bombing seagull.
Patrick MacQueen did not seek moments of meeting with his Creator, but he welcomed them when they came. They were rare experiences, and he felt like Hector basking in the Aegean Sea before the stern walls of Troy. If the gods want the ultimate, he thought, they will have to come down from their mountain.
So Master MacQueen paid his obeisance and returned, glowing, to the beach. Everything within him was washed away and he felt as though he had been to the confessional. He lay for a while, turning like a chicken on a spit, then gathered his few belongings and retraced his steps. The salt puckered his skin, which tightened reassuringly around him. He held his injured arm, but today it didn’t hurt.
Second Lieutenant William Cyples slowly pedalled his bicycle across Waterford Bridge, towards the dockyard. It was an English Raleigh, with three speeds and brakes on the handlebars, and also held a brown basket. When his mind wandered, as it was now doing, he tended to veer to the right side of the road. The jangling of the VON nurse’s bell woke him from his reverie. The staunch lady was pedalling, red of face, in the opposite direction.
“Watch it, sir!” she admonished.
Bill Cyples seemed to have fallen in with a light opera company on tour. The isolation of this Gilbert and Sullivan world from his previous experience of reality was unsettling to his peace of mind. Here the governor took his role seriously, rode in a landau with tall plumes on his helmet, and was the centrepiece of everything. The negro population—at least two-thirds of the entire colony—lived an altogether separate and unknown life. Everyone in authority was white, and no one voiced the slightest objection. It was exactly as his socialist father had explained, yet the lieutenant could not detect any signs of revolution, or even discontent. There was some rationing, and the US Navy was looming larger as the Royal Navy’s presence dwindled; but the colony seemed to take it all in stride. Even the Duke of Windsor’s brief visit en route to the Bahamas had not ruffled the surface calm.
The lieutenant returned the sentry’s salute and wobbled into the dockyard. He headed directly for the officer’s mess. The Winnipeg Grenadiers were billeted in Devonshire Parish; only a small detachment had replaced the Royal Marines to guard the dockyard. Under a sergeant, they rotated every week, but Lieutenant Cyples had arranged to stay put. He waved at retired Major Stead, ex-Indian Army and father of an extremely good-looking teenage daughter named Angella. He was in charge of the armaments depot at the dockyard.
“Good evening, Bill,” said the major. “Have a scotch?”
“Thank you, sir,” replied William Cyples. “Water, no ice. I’ll be with you in a moment.” No one drank mixed drinks here, the lieutenant was learning quickly.
In the bathroom he splashed his face with water, scowled at his dark whiskers, and patted his hair into place. Slight smudges of sweat were staining the twill tunic under his arms. His summer uniform was regular issue; outside of battle dress, he had no other kind. This was the perennial problem for young officers without a private income. The habit might not make the monk, but the uniform goes a long way in making a soldier. Except for his gold cigarette case, Lieutenant Cyples had run out of resources. The countess had produced the case from under the bed one night—it was inscribed by the viceroy of India. The lieutenant still had to pay for the drinks, and it was beginning to worry him.
The countess had quite a thirst.
40
Southampton College stood in the parish of that name, halfway between Somerset and the lighthouse. To approach it by rail from Somerset, one had to pass over the Bermuda Railway Company’s tall trestle bridge, from which one looked down on the small, stone Somerset Bridge—an intricate little drawbridge that allowed masted vessels through.
The two MacQueen boys—nicknamed “MacQueen maximum” and “MacQueen minimum”, which Patrick thought the final insult—had attended the college for one term in the thirties. His experiences had not been edifying, but there he had played cricket and taken up other pastimes of proper young Englishmen. The building itself had a cloistered front, washed in pastel orange, with a white roof and exterior staircase.
Patrick MacQueen renewed his acquaintance with the headmaster, the Reverend Mr. Stalker, at the party, as his mother predicted. Patrick had been standing on a bluff of land trying to avoid the countess’ continual gossip—“…It was at the Pierre, my dear, you know—just across from the Plaza…”—when he recognized the headmaster winding up the pathway on a bicycle, with his wife pulling up in the rear. They leaned the cycles against a wall then stepped around some horse manure and into the bowing grass. The headmaster emerged from the grass, waited for his wife, then doffed his hat, and they both assumed genial smiles. They bobbed heads and shook hands, easing their way with determination towards MacQueen on the cliff. “Imagine, a film star getting the OBE.…” said the countess.
“At least try to be civil,” ordered his mother.
Lieutenant Cyples watched the small drama with appreciation, and prayed that his friend would control himself.
The headmaster and his wife were the only ones present who really knew the depths of their own distress. In accommodating all of those rich young refugees, they had overstretched their capacity by far and had completely lost control. The years were advancing inexorably on the couple. Southampton College had been their life’s work; he was also vicar of the parish, and thus had to report to the bishop. But when the war commenced they had been deserted by their staff and most of the student body. The influx of boys from Britain had replenished the enrolment, but for employees they only had one master—a vagrant clergyman from the Orthodox Church—and Major Stead’s daughter.
The most recent calamity was a telegram from London stating that the expected games and house master had been drafted into the army. The news of Patrick’s arrival, plus the fact that he was ineligible for the draft, had given them new hope. The fact that Patrick was a Roman Catholic did not, at this juncture, bother their consciences in the least. Mrs. Stalker taught music, played the organ, and tried to control the Orthodox priest. Her hands were full enough.
The headmaster bobbed his head and smiled over protruding yellow teeth. “Young MacQueen!” he exclaimed, as though surprised to see him. “I heard that you were back from the wars. You remember my wife?”
Mrs. Stalker smiled, her face drained of blood, and for one horrifying moment MacQueen thought she was going to fall over. He shook the limp hand.
“You know the Countess Bernstog, and Lieutenant Cyples?” asked Mrs. MacQueen.
After the formalities were finished and drinks ordered, the headmaster asked, “Could I have a few words with you?” The others withdrew and left the two men standing etched against the sky. Below them the swelling Atlantic crashed against the cliffs and long-tailed seagulls swooped and screamed. It was Sunday, but the Vicar’s unctuousness had been overcome by necessity and he accepted a rum swizzle. Patrick’s nose was beginning to peel.
“You know that I would be honoured to have you on my staff, Patrick,” said the headmaster. Those words were so painful to utter that he took a long drink of rum. “Can you teach anything?”
MacQueen suddenly realized that this was a serious matter. His memories had been interfering with his judgment, but to undertake the teaching of boys meant more than merely earning a paycheque. He eased his arm from the sling and swung it gently, clenching and unclenching his fist. The headmaster noted that with approval, but he prayed that the cure would not be total.
“I’ve read a lot of history,” replied MacQueen. “Maybe you wouldn’t approve of my tastes. Napoleon, father’s war—stuff like that. I’m no good at math or science.”
The headmaster savoured this, and drank some more rum to make it palatable.
“I can draw…” said MacQueen dubiously. That was a bit more interesting.
“Know anything of the theatre?” aske
d the headmaster. They were planning an outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice.
“I could paint the sets,” laughed MacQueen. “What about a cadet corps?”
The world ceased spinning for an instant as the headmaster heard those magic words. My God, he thought, if the boy could do that we would be saved. “Would we get government help, I wonder?” he asked. “Surely not in a private church school.”
“Perhaps talk to mother,” said MacQueen. “She’s a great fund-raiser.”
“Great heavens!” exclaimed the headmaster, despite himself. “I think it’s a fine idea. Can we talk to her right away? I would like you to start tomorrow morning.”
MacQueen winked at Lieutenant Cyples. They grinned. Another path had opened up, and who knew what lay down the road? Major Stead arrived with his wife and daughter. MacQueen took one look at this rosy young colleague and imagined he knew a part of the answer.
Although her mother looked like a pocket battleship.
41
Master John Warnefeld-Davies was twelve, wore a blazer striped in the school colours of beige and blue, and was the only son and heir of a London businessman who had made a fortune from leg makeup. He was a handsome boy, with a beautifully shaped head and dark golden hair that fell on his brow. He was fastidious, and his Polish mother indulged him. His perceptions were acute, and his judgments reflected hers: they were sardonic and sophisticated. John’s mother’s name was Rene.
Their enforced exile from Britain was not unwelcome, if only to get away from Mr. Davies’ lechery. The mother had rented a small limestone house near the Belmont Manor Hotel. She had wanted to move to Miami, but the curbs on the flow of money had become so strict that she was forced to remain in Bermuda. She had a friend, Nora, who also had a boy at the school, but few other acquaintances. Nora was a tiresome chatterbox, emotional and childish, but she had a good heart. Rene reclined in a deckchair that enveloped her tiny frame, reading The New Yorker and puffing on a cigarette, which she inhaled deeply. Her long hair was jet-black, and she wore brilliantly coloured scarves and evening clothes.
The Broken Sword Page 18