Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  Arthur and Daisy and Katherine found this second reminder of George’s existence less easy to dismiss than the first had been. They began to remember stories not only of the profligacy of the Orient but of the prolificity of the tropics. Arthur told Daisy that the last Indian census had shown an increase in the population of forty million souls. Daisy suspected, and Katherine declared, that a score or so of George’s begetting might well be included in this monstrous growth. They were having tea at Rurnneys when she made this uncomfortable suggestion. The enormous fertility of Hindustan darkened their thoughts. Dim visions of obscene temples and procreant jungles and swarming bazaars filled their minds.

  Half-spiteful and half-frightened, Katherine said, ‘Out of forty million babies some are sure to be George’s.’

  ‘But he can’t possibly bring them home,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Katherine.

  ‘Well, think what people would say if he came to Lammiter with a huge coffee-coloured family. Even George wouldn’t outrage decency to that extent.’

  ‘There’s no need for him to come home,’ said Jane. ‘Twenty children in Bombay are worth as much as twenty children in Lammiter. All he has to do is to send Peabody copies of their birth-certificates, and the money’s his.’

  Hilary intervened. ‘John didn’t leave his money to the parent of the largest family, but to the parent of the largest family born in wedlock. And if George has twenty, or even twelve children, they can’t all be legitimate.’

  ‘How long has he been in Bombay?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘I don’t know. We thought he was going to America when he left here the last time.’

  ‘That was seven years ago,’ said Katherine thoughtfully. ‘But he had been in India before that.’

  ‘He may have become a Mohammedan,’ said Jane.

  ‘What difference would that make?’ asked Katherine.

  ‘He could have four wives, all perfectly legal, and the children of those wives would be no more illegitimate than Ruth.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly compare them with Ruth,’ said Daisy stiffly. ‘Arthur and I were married in church …’

  ‘And George was married in a mosque. Or probably in four mosques,’ said Jane.

  ‘But this is a Christian country …’

  ‘There are far more Mohammedans than Christians in the British Empire.’

  ‘That makes no difference at all. Nobody whose parents weren’t married in church or a proper registry office can be really legitimate, in our sense of the word, and to compare Ruth with a lot of Mohammedan children is simply disgusting.’

  ‘They’ll be her cousins,’ said Jane.

  ‘I shan’t acknowledge any relationship with them whatsoever.’

  ‘But you won’t be able to deny it, and I’m perfectly sure that George will expect Ruth to play with them even if they are a bit black.’

  ‘This will ruin Oliver!’ exclaimed Katherine with sudden bitterness. ‘He’ll have to resign his commission. He can’t possibly stay in the Army if it becomes known that he has Indian relations.’

  ‘It’s curious to think of your having twenty Mohammedan nephews and nieces,’ said Jane.

  Further unpleasantness was prevented by Hilary’s opportune reminder that they had no real grounds for supposing George had become a Moslem, and in reaction to the sepia pictures they had been painting of a quartet of wives and a multitudinous progeny, they gradually came to assume, and to persuade themselves, that George was still a bachelor and a barren branch.

  Meanwhile Hilary’s housekeeper, Mrs Arbor, was also entertaining friends: Mrs Barrow had come to tea, and Mrs Finger, the new housekeeper at the Vicarage. Mrs Finger had a lot of good stories about ducal eccentricities at Starveling Court and the manners and the quiddities of people far remote from the knowledge of Mrs Barrow and Mrs Arbor, who valued her friendship accordingly. She had a dry unemotional way of speaking. She would suck in her lips and stare at her interlocutor with black beady eyes that were sometimes more startling than her conversation.

  She finished her description of a house-party at Starveling Court during one of Lord Quentin’s recurrent periods of affluence, and Mrs Arbor remarked, ‘It must be quite a change for you at the vicarage, Mrs Finger.’

  ‘He’s got water on the brain,’ said Mrs Finger.

  ‘You mean the Vicar?’

  Mrs Finger nodded. ‘I’ve seen it before,’ she said.’Lord Eustace got it: he was the old Duke’s brother. It’s a puddle under the skull, and it soaks down. Lord Eustace was a bit of a rip in his young days – it was him that had tied a bell under Mrs Lovely’s bed before Lord Everipe went into the wrong room, which he always did, and woke up everyone thinking it was a fire – but after Lord Eustace got water on the brain he began to think he was saved, and sat in the w.c. all day singing hymns. Only it’s had a different effect on the Vicar, because he’s an atheist now.’

  Mrs Arbor gasped. ‘An atheist!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘He told me so himself. He said he’d lost his faith.’

  ‘Then he’s very, very ill,’ said Mrs Barrow solemnly.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ asked Mrs Arbor.

  ‘I told him he ought to cheer up and get married again. He’s the sort of man who needs a wife.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t restore his faith,’ said Mrs Arbor.

  ‘Of course it would, if she looked after him properly. Some people can’t be Christians unless they’re comfortable, and others can’t unless they’re miserable. There was the Honourable Harry Gallop, for one: he always used to go to church after he’d made a good bet, just to show how happy he was. And there was old Lord Liable who used to give cheques for thousands of pounds to Foreign Missions whenever he went bankrupt: they weren’t worth anything, of course, but they showed his piety. Religion takes people different ways, and the Vicar’s one of the first kind. If he got another wife, and twenty thousand pounds in the bank, he’d be a roaring Christian in half an hour.’

  Mrs Arbor and Mrs Barrow were obviously worried by this explanation. They recognized heresy, and suspected blasphemy. Mrs Barrow made a vague remark or two, and Mrs Arbor smoothed her dress with a decisive gesture. ‘And how is Mr Stephen getting along?’ she asked, signalling a change in the conversation as ostentatiously as a traffic policeman who stops and starts opposing motor streams.

  ‘He’s a different man from what he was before Christmas,’ said Mrs Barrow enthusiastically. ‘It’s a treat to see him now, him and Mr Wilfrid, they’re as happy as sandboys, and working hard, and the letters they write to the students are just a joy to read. I often go in and take a look at them, there’s always some lying about, and the sheer human kindness of them is simply a revelation.’

  ‘They’re paid for it,’ remarked Mrs Finger.

  ‘Of course they are!’ said Mrs Barrow. ‘And so were the teachers who taught you and me and Mrs Arbor, and all the encouragement I ever got was being hit across the knuckles with a ruler. But Mr Stephen and Mr Wilfrid are like a father and mother to their students. I was reading one of their letters only this morning, and really if you knew the circumstances, it was a marvel they could do it. Because I read the composition it was about – the students all write compositions, and Mr Wilfrid and Mr Stephen correct them and say what’s wrong with them – and this one was from a young man in Scotland, and he was writing about the Modern Girl, and for all he knew about them he might have been bedridden from birth. Why, he couldn’t even spell knickers! But Mr Wilfrid wasn’t angry a bit. He wrote: “Dear Mr Campbell. We were delighted to receive your Second Exercise and to note the real advance you have made in your studies.” Then he went on about his style having improved, and how he’d learned to come to grips with his subject, though of course he hadn’t and probably never will, from the sound of him. But Mr Wilfrid said, “We have taken special interest in your work from the beginning, and we feel quite sure that if you persist in your literary endeavours you will soon find a market for anything you care
to write.” Then he explained what was wrong with the composition, but all so nicely that it was more like praise than blame. Now if that isn’t real Christian kindliness, I never hope to see it.’

  ‘Good business, I call it,’ said Mrs Finger.

  ‘That may be,’ said Mrs Barrow, ‘but kindness never did any harm, even in business, and Mr Wilfrid’s kindness itself, and so is Mr Stephen. I’ve said from the start, and I still say it, that if the Major wanted his money to be used with charity and understanding, he should have left it to them.’

  ‘Mr Arthur needs it more than they do, poor soul,’ said Mrs Arbor with a sigh.

  ‘She can’t be more than two or three months off her time now,’ said Mrs Finger.

  ‘The first week in May, I understand,’ said Mrs Arbor.

  ‘It’ll be a boy,’ said Mrs Finger.

  ‘I’m sure we all hope so,’ said Mrs Arbor, ‘and I won’t be surprised if you’re right. I was talking to that cook of hers not long ago – a poor thing she is too – and she said that Mrs Arthur had been eating half a dozen tangerine oranges every day for weeks past, and according to my experience they’re much more inclined to fruit when it’s a boy, and to solid things like suet puddings and macaroni-and-cheese when it’s a girl.’

  ‘I’ve heard that, too,’ said Mrs Finger, ‘and I don’t put much trust in it. But you can always tell by their shape. Now Mrs Arthur’s carrying well forward, high, and on the right side. And that’s always a boy. You watch her closely and you’ll see that her right eye’s brighter than the left, though her glasses hide it a little, and there’s another sign. And unless I’m much mistaken she steps off with her right foot, which makes it proof positive.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mrs Barrow, ‘I’ve heard it often and never known it come wrong.’

  ‘Now, Miss Katherine, or Mrs Oliver, as I should say, is quite different,’ said Mrs Arbor.

  ‘She’s certainly spread out,’ said Mrs Barrow.

  ‘Those thin ones often do,’ said Mrs Finger. ‘You wouldn’t think they could, and then about the fifth month they begin to open out like an umbrella. I never showed much myself, right till the end, I was always stout and thick-set, but my girl Jenny was as slim as a reed, and when she got into trouble we all saw it in no time. She couldn’t hide it, being built that way.’

  Mrs Arbor nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Does Miss Katherine still think it’s twins?’ asked Mrs Barrow.

  ‘She’s sure of it,’ said Mrs Arbor.

  ‘She’s preparing for a disappointment,’ said Mrs Barrow. ‘They don’t often come, and she’s got nothing to go by. What do you say, Mrs Finger?’

  Mrs Finger pursed her lips.’ I wouldn’t like to commit myself,’ she said, ‘but it might be twins. She’s showing both fore and aft, as you might say, and unless she’s farther on than she thinks, and I’ve seen a lot of mistakes that way, well, she may be right. But you never can tell with a shape like hers.’

  ‘I wouldn’t wish for twins myself,’ said Mrs Barrow, ‘no matter how much I was going to be paid for them. One at a time’s trouble enough, heaven knows.’

  ‘She’ll be fit for them,’ said Mrs Finger.’ Her kind always make the best nurses. There was a sister of my own, married well in Rugby, they had The Light Horseman, she was as fat as a cow and never had any milk worth speaking of. But my girl Jenny, who looked like a stick of celery beforehand, could have nursed a dozen.’

  The scope of the conversation grew wider. The ripples spread outwards and touched cousins, aunts, grandmothers, friends, and sisters-in-law. Mrs Arbor put away the tea-cups and brought out a bottle of sherry. The rain beat steadily on the dark window-panes.

  A mile away, in Mr Peabody’s office, The Times, neatly folded, lay on his leather-topped table ready to be taken home, to be largely opened, to proclaim its sober and dignified tidings of civilization in disgrace, and the renaissance of tyranny. But unmoved by politics, disdainful of alarm, more remote from panic than The Times itself, Mrs Arbor and Mrs Finger and Mrs Barrow discreetly sipped their sherry and gave, in their wisdom, their minds to the primary issue of life and the essence of human-kind, before which tyrants are impotent and civilization is but a printed page in a gale of wind.

  Chapter 15

  On the first of May, a cold and windy morning, Arthur woke in a resentful mood and clothed himself in the order and manner that betokened, in his code of dressing, a mutinous hatred of the petty surroundings in which he lived. He omitted to shave; he put on pants and trousers, socks and shoes; he considered his bare-chested image in the mirror; and with a grim and bitter smile declaimed:

  ‘Give me a spirit that on this life’s rough sea,

  Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,

  Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,

  And his rapt ship run on her side so low

  That she drinks water and, and, and …’

  He frowned, and clicked his tongue impatiently, but could not remember the next phrase. The passage, a short one, was in an anthology called Texts and Pretexts that he had borrowed from Stephen, and in which he had found much to interest him. He had, as he thought, got by heart this brief and stirring extract. It had seemed to fill a want in his utterance. It was a mood with which he had long been acquainted, but which he had never been able to crystallize into speech. The thought was native to him, and the sharp glittering words in which it was caught and essentialized made him hotly and angrily in love with it. Not to remember the conclusion was exasperating. But the book was downstairs, he would get it and refresh his memory. He opened the door of his dressing-room and marched out as he was, naked to the waist, frowning, unshaved, a rebel who loved to have his sails filled with a lusty wind.

  Miss Chiblet, the monthly nurse who had lately taken up residence in the house in preparation for Daisy’s lying-in, met him in the passage. She was a refined and severe young woman, a protégée of one of Daisy’s friends. ‘Oh, Mr Gander!’ she said. ‘What a fright you gave me!’

  ‘Tchah!’ said Arthur, and went downstairs.

  Ruth was in the sitting-room, reading an old Sunday newspaper that she had borrowed from the kitchen. She looked at her father in some surprise, but without sufficient curiosity to ask him what had become of his shirt. She was more interested in the story she was reading. ‘It says here’, she exclaimed, ‘that a boy in America swallowed a newt, and it wouldn’t come out again. So he ate a lot of salt, pounds and pounds of it, and went to a river where there was a very loud waterfall, and lay down on the grass …’

  Arthur took no notice of his daughter, but searched the bookshelves. He found what he wanted and walked sternly out of the room. Ruth followed him to the foot of the stairs, and shouted, ‘But would the newt really come out again when it heard the waterfall? Oh, would it, Daddy? Tell me, please, I want to know!’

  Arthur, paying no attention, re-entered his dressing-room and firmly closed the door. The anthology opened at the wanted poem. He faced the mirror, the book in his left hand, his right thumb hooked into the top of his trousers, a lowering and belligerent expression on his face. He completed his quotation:

  ‘That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.

  There is no danger to a man that knows

  What life and death is; there’s not any law

  Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful

  That he should stoop to any other law.’

  ‘It’s absurd,’ he muttered to his image, ‘it’s fantastically absurd that a man like me should be cribbed and cabined by mean and meagre domestic bonds. A soldier, by God! And I spend my time telephoning for the doctor and reading The Wind in the Willows to Daisy! I’ve had enough of it. This isn’t the life for me. I want to live where there’s no law but the law of life and death. A battlefield, a frontier, a pioneer’s cabin: they’re the places for me. And it isn’t too late to change! I could go to Kenya, to the Peace River country, to, to, to – well, there’s a dozen other places
. Or gun-running. In Manchuria, to Paraguay, to the Communists in South China: a man’s life, beyond the law, desperate and unafraid till the masts crack and the sea comes in, and there’s an end!’

  The door opened and Ruth’s solemn bespectacled face came round the edge of it. ‘Daddy,’ she asked, ‘would the newt really come out when it heard the waterfall? Because the boy had taken lots and lots of salt?’

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Why were you making faces at yourself in the glass?’

  ‘Get out of here! Go and have your breakfast !’ shouted Arthur.

  ‘It isn’t ready yet,’ said Ruth.

  Arthur pushed her out and closed the door again.

  ‘Children hanging on to my coat-tails,’ he growled; ‘children filling the house, babies and nurses and cradles in every damned room: by God, it’s too much! I’m a soldier, not a wet nurse … There are rifles in that crate and machine-gun parts in the other. Fifty short magazine Lee-Enfields, and twenty thousand rounds of ammunition. Get ‘em unpacked, quick, and spread your men along that ridge. We’ll hold the pass as long as there’s a round left, or I’ll shoot the first man who turns tail. I’m not frightened of those damned Japs!’