Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  ‘Bahut bhukha hun,’ wailed Timothy, and Edward, between sobs, cried shrilly after him, ‘Bahut bhukha hun!’

  ‘Can’t they speak English?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘Sometimes you’d be surprised by their command of our rich and flexible language,’ said George. ‘But in moments of stress, in the hours of emotion or fatigue, they’re liable to fall back on Hindustani.’

  ‘They have learnt it from their ayah, no doubt,’ Doris explained, ‘and they have also heard it from the malt and the other servants when they are playing in the compound.’

  ‘Bahut bhukha hun,’ whimpered Timothy.

  ‘But what does he want?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘He says he’s hungry,’ said Doris, ‘but he is only a crybaby. He has been eating cakes and such-like delicacies all day, and he ought to be highly thankful for so many good things instead of making tantrums in other person’s bungalow.’

  ‘Mrs Arbor,’ said Hilary – Mrs Arbor had silently joined the company – ‘Take these children to the nursery, and the little girl with the hat on too, and get them to bed, and give them some hot milk.’

  Mrs Arbor led the little boys upstairs, and Clarice, a phlegmatic child, obediently followed.

  Hilary turned to Doris: ‘I expect you and your sister are almost as tired as the children?’

  ‘Oh, no, indeed!’ said Doris. ‘We are well used to late nights. In Bombay we are constantly at balls and parties, in the Yacht Club and the Byculla Club and elsewhere as well, and there the merriment never finishes before the wee small hours.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll find Lammiter rather dull in comparison,’ said Hilary.

  They all returned to the drawing-room except George, who was arguing with the taxi-driver. ‘I repeat, for your benefit,’ he said, ‘that I’ve just come home from India, and I haven’t had time to change my several lakhs of rupees into pounds, shillings, and pence. So tell your employer to send the bill to this address, and meanwhile here’s half a crown for yourself. You won’t do any good by being rude, because this is all the English money I’ve got. So take it or leave it.’

  Having got rid of the taxi-driver without wasting Mr Peabody’s two pounds, George, well pleased with himself, joined the others in the drawing-room.

  He found Arthur, Wilfrid, and Mr Peabody sitting side by side on a couch. None of them had spoken a word since their first glimpse of these new exotic Ganders, and they were still silently entranced by the spectacle of Doris in lively conversation with Hilary, and of Tessie on a pouf beside her. The latter view, indeed, was intermittently disconcerting to Arthur and Wilfrid, for the pouf was low, and she sat in such a way that beyond her stocking-tops a segment of unclad thigh was visible, on which, ever and again, by horrid accident, their gaze embarrassingly fell. But even without this disturbing peep-show they would have been far from comfortable and just as attentive. Every glance from Tessie’s lustrous eyes put them out of countenance, and Doris, with a sidelong look, brought blushes to their cheeks. Even Mr Peabody betrayed something like emotion, though in a negative way: for his attitude was that of a small boy confronting for the first time a mandril or giraffe – notionless, blankly staring, transfixed by wonder, lost in uncharted seas beyond experience. Nothing like Tessie or Doris had ever been seen before in Lammiter, unless in the talking-picture theatres.

  They were disturbingly lovely, and their complexion made the pink and white of English cheeks appear, in comparison, crude colours carelessly applied, mere afterthoughts, by a daubing amateur: for the pallor of their faces, a moonlike pallor, seemed inseparable from the smooth texture of their skin, like the faint hue of ivory, or the pale glow of a primrose in woody shade. Moonlight was Arthur’s comparison. ‘Like moonlight on a cloud’, he thought, and blushed, and smirked with exquisite discomfort when Doris, from under thin black brows, shot a warm glance at him. Their eyes – but metaphors grow mixed, for their eyes were dark and liquid, their eyes were deadly marksmen, their eyes were eloquent and all their honeyed phrases spoke of love. They were, thought Wilfrid – recalling with distaste a vulgar expression he once had heard – they were bedroom eyes: but not of that draughty chamber, that aseptic dormitory, that cold prelude to a colder bath, the English bedroom: rather of a cushioned and fountain-loud seraglio, or perfumed cabinet whose walls were delicately lewd from Aretino’s inspiration. Wilfrid quite frankly disliked their eyes, but could not keep his own from meeting them.

  Their figures were slim, their movements voluptuous. Their thin bare arms and their legs, almost as thin beneath airy stockings, suggested the rippling agility of an Oriental dance. And their chi-chi voices – or rather Doris’s voice, for Tessie appeared to speak only with her eyes – had the exotic charm of novelty, for neither Wilfrid nor Arthur nor Mr Peabody had ever heard before that bright scalloped rhythm, or encountered their slightly dislocated idiom.

  George’s voice woke Mr Peabody from his trance. George had helped himself to a drink, and George said heartily, ‘Well, Hilary, are you going to admit that I’ve done you a good turn? Don’t you think they’ll do credit to the ancient and honourable name of Gander?’

  Mr Peabody thought: ‘I must make an early opportunity to have a long and serious talk with George. He will have to produce a marriage certificate and five – or six? No, five – birth certificates; and I must satisfy myself as to their authenticity. Because this extraordinary family, if indeed they are his and were born in wedlock, will certainly make him the heir to seventy thousand pounds. Dear, dear! I was prepared for a surprise, but not for a denouement so astonishing as this,’

  Hilary, in a strained, unhappy voice, answered George’s questions. ‘I’m sure we shall get on together as well as can be expected,’ she said, ‘and perhaps even better than that. But I hope Doris won’t be disappointed in Lammiter. She seems to have led a very gay life in Bombay. Going to dances, I mean, and parties, and so forth.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Doris, ‘we are most enthusiastic dancers, are we not, Tessie?’

  Tessie looked meltingly at Wilfrid. ‘Can you dance the Valita, Mr Follison,’ she asked, ‘or the De Albert? On the steamer not one of the gentlemen knew them, but they are quite my favourite dances, and we always had them at the Institute in Parel.’

  ‘And at the Yacht Club also, and in many bungalows on Malabar Hill,’ said Doris hurriedly.

  George, laughing suddenly, blew into his whisky and soda like a seal coming to the surface.’ Excuse my boisterous behaviour,’ he said, ‘but I was just thinking that these girls of mine are going to be a welcome spot of colour in the wide open spaces of Lammiter’s experience. And we’ll have to keep an eye on ‘em, Hilary. They’ll make a bee-line for anything in trousers, from a postman to a Privy Councillor. Even the Boy Scouts won’t be safe from them.’

  Hilary said, ‘I don’t care for jokes of that sort. That isn’t the way to speak before your daughters, and it certainly isn’t the way to speak of them.’

  ‘Our father is a highly jocular man,’ said Doris. ‘Our father …’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t refer to me in that damned liturgical style,’ complained George.

  ‘It’s getting very late,’ said Hilary, and rose from her chair.

  ‘Now don’t spoil the party,’ said George. ‘Here am I, home from the gorgeous East, the land of glittering despair, all set for a cosy heart-to-heart talk on the immortal theme that Home is Best, and you tell me it’s getting late. Sit down and have a drink, Hilary, and take another look at these girls of mine. Don’t you think they’re like you? They’re Ganders to the backbone. My greatest pride in them has always been that they’re the spitting image of you. Not exactly as you are now perhaps – you’re handsomer than you used to be – but what you were at their age. Don’t you think so, Peabody? Don’t you agree with me, Arthur?’

  ‘You’re talking arrant nonsense,’ said Hilary, and having made her excuses to Mr Peabody, Arthur, and Wilfrid – who bade good night to Doris and Tessie with bewilderment, a fearful jo
y, and plain timidity respectively – she shepherded her nieces from the room. She paused for a moment at the door, and said bitterly, ‘I hope you sleep better than I shall, George. You’ll find your old room ready for you.’

  Mr Peabody also prepared to go. ‘You must come and have a talk with me as soon as you can,’ he said. ‘On Monday morning, perhaps, at my office?’

  ‘With all my affidavits, writs, depositions, and certificates in a sealed envelope,’ said George agreeably. ‘You’ll find everything in order, Peabody. My quiver’s entirely filled by legitimate offspring – though their colour’s a bit off-white, as you may have noticed – and they’ve all been christened, vaccinated, and prepared for congratulation. The booty’s mine, Peabody, and I’d like to touch you for a couple of hundred almost at once. I’m sorry, Arthur, old man, but we’ve got to face facts, haven’t we? I’ll lend you a fiver now and then if you’re ever hard up.’

  ‘My income is perfectly sufficient for the quiet way in which I live,’ said Arthur stiffly.

  ‘You’re damned lucky,’ said George.

  ‘Well, I must be going,’ exclaimed Mr Peabody. ‘No, I want nothing to drink, thank you, and I can find my own way out. We meet again on Monday morning, about eleven-thirty: you will remember? Good night, good night.’

  Arthur and Wilfrid likewise refused George’s offer of continued entertainment: Wilfrid, shaken by his encounter with Doris and Tessie, was also a little nervous of George: and Arthur, suddenly realizing that these houris who had so embarrassed and enchanted him were finally dispossessing him of fortune, was not unnaturally depressed.

  He and Wilfrid left together. Before separating – Wilfrid turning left for Mulberry Acre, Arthur going downhill to Hornbeam Lane – they stood for a half a minute in silence, vainly seeking words to ease their minds of an impacted and complicated burden.

  At last Wilfrid, indignantly, said, ‘I think they’re terrible! All of them, simply terrible!’

  ‘And they’re going to inherit seventy thousand pounds,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Girls like that oughtn’t to be allowed into the country!’ said Wilfrid.

  Arthur sighed deeply.

  ‘They’re horrible girls! I felt as though – well, as if I weren’t properly buttoned-up – whenever they looked at me.’

  ‘And yet they had a curious fascination,’ murmured Arthur.

  ‘They’re too disgusting for anything.’

  ‘They remind me of a woman I met in Constantinople,’ said Arthur. ‘She had the same complexion, a strange moonlit pallor. I remember crossing the Galata Bridge one night…’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d ever been to Constantinople,’ said Wilfrid crossly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Arthur very blandly. ‘I went out with Harington in 1920. An interesting show, that. I must tell you about it some day. And then I met this extraordinary woman, very like Doris…’

  ‘No, Arthur, please don’t tell me! I couldn’t bear to hear another word about women. Not tonight, not after seeing Doris and Tessie. They were so horrible!’

  Arthur shrugged his shoulders and walked slowly towards Hornbeam Lane. He amused, and even excited himself, by the story of his Constantinople adventure. It was the first time he had heard it, and he thought it uncommonly good.

  Chapter 18

  On the following day, which was Sunday, Lammiter, with rare exceptions, found satisfactory release for all its energy in talking. By twelve twenty-five, ten minutes after the conclusion of morning service, nearly everybody had heard of George’s arrival, and various descriptions of his family, some more inaccurate than others, were in rapid circulation. Among the few who experienced a desire for more positive activity were Tessie and Katherine. At five o’clock in the afternoon Tessie went out for a walk, and half an hour later, in a dampish copse at the foot of Hornbeam Lane, she was being very satisfactorily hugged under a tree by Sergeant Pilcher: that same Sergeant Pilcher whose men inadvertently fired a feu de joie at Major Gander’s funeral. And about the same time Katherine was making arrangements to remove herself and her twins to the home of her parents-in-law at Bognor.

  A whole procession of emotions, however, preceded these diverse yet cousinly events – Tessie leaning warmly against Sergeant Pilcher’s blue patrol jacket was nearly related to the shrillness of Katherine’s voice as she telephoned to her mother-in-law – and Hilary, more than all others, deserved sympathy for the part she was compelled to play. She had slept poorly, and the elastic hours of night, so brief in slumber, so interminable to the wakeful, had been stretched intolerably by alternating thoughts of George and Doris, of Clarice and the dark tearful little boys. She had a strong sense of family obligations, and before seeing them she had never doubted that it was her duty, nor denied that it was her inclination, to entertain them. But in the dreary solitude of sleeplessness she condemned her inclination and regretted her sense of duty, for the game femininity of Doris and Tessie, fortified as it was by such unnecessary loveliness, filled her with foreboding; and scandal, as she knew, was native to George as fleas to a dog.

  But in the morning twilight she fell asleep, and was wakened two or three hours later with early tea and the news that Clarice, Edward, and Timothy had disappeared. No one had seen them go out, but they had certainly been gone for more than an hour. Hilary was not greatly surprised. She felt sure they would turn up again. ‘We mustn’t worry over small mishaps,’ she told Mrs Arbor, who had come in to amplify the maid’s story. ‘We’re going to have a very trying time for the next few weeks, I’m afraid, and we must learn to take things philosophically. We must discipline ourselves to be calm.’

  The children were brought home by a policeman a little before ten o’clock. They had been found on the other side of Lammiter, two or three miles away. The little boys were again crying, but Clarice was quite unperturbed. She still wore the khaki topee. They had gone out ‘for hawa khana’, she said, and they had got lost. That was all.

  Hilary abandoned her tentative idea of taking them to church. George came down at half-past ten, very well pleased with himself and the world, though he had finished the whisky before going to sleep. Doris and Tessie were still in bed. Hilary went to church alone.

  The Vicar was still lame, but he could walk a little with the help of a crutch. The handrail creaked as he hoisted himself into the pulpit; and he preached an excessively dreary sermon on the twenty-seventh verse of the first chapter of the General Epistle of James. Hilary nodded and fell into a light doze. For many years she had visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and she felt that nothing Lionel could tell her about it would enable her to do it with greater willingness or acceptability. Miss Montgomery, with whom she walked part of the way home, was of the same opinion.

  ‘I suppose that’s what they call an ethical sermon,’ she said disdainfully. ‘Well, I don’t like them, and I never shall. Keep ourselves unspotted from the world, indeed! What hope have I of getting spotted? And then to be told to live a life of service to the community! Good heavens, we might as well go to a Rotary Club. What I want to hear, when I go to church, is faith! I know all about works, and so do you. Ethical sermons indeed!’

  ‘Lionel’s terribly dull nowadays,’ Hilary agreed.

  ‘He needs a woman in the house,’ said Miss Montgomery. ‘Why don’t you marry him yourself, and help to look after those children of his?’

  ‘I’ve got plenty to look after at present. George came home last night.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘It’s going to be very difficult.’

  ‘Are they all black?’

  ‘I wish they were. There are two lovely grown-up girls, no darker than Spaniards, and I don’t like the look of them at all.’

  ‘How long has George been married?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of us knew that he was married till now. The first time he left home was in 1912, and we’ve only seen him at long intervals since then.’

  ‘Do you think they’re legitimate?’
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br />   ‘I suppose so. He wouldn’t have brought them here if they weren’t.’

  ‘Then he’s going to get the Major’s money?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘I hear that Daisy is very upset.’

  ‘Very. And so is Katherine.’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t be really sorry for Katherine. She’s been a little bit too obviously mercenary. And in any case children will do her good: they’ll make her less egotistical.’

  ‘I must go and see her this afternoon,’ said Hilary.

  ‘She’s still in the nursing-home?’

  ‘Yes. But she’s quite strong again now.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry yourself, Hilary. Whatever George or the girls do – and I don’t trust George for a minute – nobody’s going to blame you. But my advice is, get rid of them as soon as you can. If George gets seventy thousand pounds he’s going to be much more dangerous, and much more of a nuisance, than he is now. So if I were you I’d look for a little house for them, and get them moved into it as soon as possible.’

  Miss Montgomery spoke with unusual decision, now cocking her head on one side to peer sharply at Hilary, now vigorously nodding it, so that, with her little red hat, she looked something like a woodpecker at work.

  ‘I hate to see these people imposing on you,’ she said.

  When Hilary got back to Rumneys she found Doris and Tessie huddled over the drawing-room fire. The morning had been bright, though not particularly warm, but sudden clouds had brought a heavy fall of rain.

  ‘Our father has told us this would be the hot weather in England,’ said Doris disconsolately, ‘but now it looks more like monsoon.’

  ‘It’s only a shower,’ said Hilary.

  The dining-room was fireless, and, despite the imminence of June, definitely cold. Neither Doris nor Tessie enjoyed her lunch, but George maintained a brisk conversation with questions about Arthur and Daisy, Wilfrid and Katherine. He was immoderately pleased to be told about Katherine’s twins and Daisy’s belated son.