by Jane Gardam
He rubbed at his hair like a small child, going round and round his head in circles.
‘I didn’t know you were a soldier.’
‘I jumped the gun. Made enquiries. I got my papers this very morning.’
‘You said you couldn’t bear guns.’
‘That was long ago.’
‘I saw this coming. Well, it has to be done.’
‘Saw what coming?’
He took his face out of the towel—his ears vermilion, the hands in the towel bony and big—‘But you know? You’ve heard?’
‘No.’
‘We’re at war. It was all up yesterday—well, it was all up in June. The declaration was this morning.’
‘I heard nothing. Did the bells ring?’
‘No. There was nothing. It’s just seeping around. They have a telephone at the Zeits.’
‘We’re—rather cut off out here.’
‘Well, it’s the war. There’s no doubt about it. No choice if we’re to keep with France. May as well get it over—it won’t last long.’
‘A war.’ Trying the word over, it sounded mad. Such a random thing. A boy with a gun in Bohemia, one afternoon. The lunatic world.
‘It comes from so far away. Such a foreign, hysterical sort of thing. It happens all the time in historical novels, the shooting of dukes, but the world doesn’t join in.’
‘It’s not nothing to Austria. It’s as if our Prince of Wales had been assassinated in Ireland.’
‘Well, yes I see. That would be frightful. But it makes me think we should be on their side.’
‘What a desert isle you live on.’
‘Come through,’ I said. ‘We’ll take the tea to the study. D’you think—d’you suppose we’ll actually notice it? Up here?’
‘All the men will disappear,’ he said. ‘They say a hundred thousand are going to France. Theo Zeit says there is a plan to make a new army—overnight. Everybody—the butcher, the baker. It will be mediaeval. Magnificent. Otherwise I dare say it won’t change your life here very much—unless there’s a bombardment from the sea. But that couldn’t happen in the North-East I’d think. You’d be a huge target here of course—in this house—you’re almost in the water.’
‘Yes, almost.’
‘You must mind these books,’ he said. He was moving fussily around the room, touching the shelves. ‘Take care of them. Maybe you should let the Zeits look after them at Roundstone.’
‘What’s happening to the Zeits?’
‘Nothing yet. Theo isn’t in any hurry for the army. He’s very quiet. You know how he is. Rebecca’s all agog. Talking of nursing already. But there’s a snag or two. For all of them. Not very pleasant.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well—foreign blood and so on you know. They’re Germans, after all. German Jews. Schieswig-Holstein or somewhere extraordinary—there are a good many in the North-East. They’ve been here for a generation. Everyone calls them German though. And since Theo’s father died—’
‘Oh did he? I didn’t know. I never saw him. Mr Thwaite liked him so much. I’m sorry.’
‘Grand old country gentleman. Typical English country gentleman, if you didn’t know. He collected butterflies. She was the power house always. The genius Ironmaster was Theo’s grandfather and Mrs Zeit took up the reins. Theo’ll take over in time of course and be magnificent. He’s a marvelous chap—you can feel it, can’t you? He keeps his own counsel. You can never get very near him. But everyone likes him. He’ll have a hard time. The Iron-Works are in poor shape aren’t they?’
‘There have always been people thrown out of work there, I think. It stays like that. We don’ t really know much about the Works on the marsh.’ (And all the time I was saying: Paul Treece, Paul Treece is here and Theo not two miles away.)
‘Theo will change things. He may stay here now. There may just be some trouble about him getting into the army you know. He may be more useful here at home.’
(Theo upon my doorstep. Theo near me all the time!)
‘Could I?’ He took down a book and looked at it with love. He stroked it and smelled it. ‘When I come back from the war,’ he said, ‘I shall sit still all my life in a room full of books.’
I liked him again. He was standing in profile too.
‘I see you here,’ he said, ‘a hundred years behind your times, reading Jane Austen—what an edition!—through endless afternoons. Sitting up straight, as you do!’
‘I don’t like her much.’ (He’s noticed how I sit.)
‘Good heavens, don’t you? Of course, I’d forgotten. Defoe’s the one isn’t he? Is he still? People usually move off from Robinson Crusoe after childhood.’
‘I shall never move off.’
‘Perhaps you will always be a—’ But he caught my look, I dare say. I’d noticed this before in people. I hoped it wasn’t something I’d learned from Mrs Woods.
‘Now why on earth is that, I wonder?’ he said instead. ‘“The granite rock of English fiction” and so forth, but not high in the imaginative stakes. Not exactly given to flights of poetry.’
‘Neither’s Jane Austen. And imagination—you’re mad. Have you ever tried to imagine it? Twenty-eight years of life, minute by minute, solitary, out of touch, nothing but the Bible and some animals? Not a soul to open your mouth to with hope of a proper reply for nearly thirty years? And all those years in holy dread? And the creation of a whole landscape? Out of nothing? He wasn’t much of a traveller, Defoe, you know. D’you think he’d really seen bears and the Indies and cannibals and the sea-coast of Sallee?’
‘Goodness me. There are qualities of imagination you know. Jane Austen’s was water-colour. Subtle. She had the poetry of the intricate mind.’
‘Oh get on,’ I said—and looked round to see if it was someone else speaking. For a moment I thought I’d said one of the words from Wales. ‘Water-colour. Etching, more like. And I’m a bit lost with intricate minds to tell you the truth. I like large obvious minds. I suppose it’s because I’m large and rather obvious but—I love people who are very rational. Who do things. I admire it. Not that I am rational—I have to work very hard at it. I’d much rather go soaring off somewhere in the imagination, but you can’t face things that way. It’s not brave. Robinson Crusoe was very brave. And strong and oh, so clever.’
‘How long since you read it, Mistress Flint?’
‘I read it most years. I read Defoe all the time, but Crusoe separate from the rest. He’s a separate, real person Defoe, struck upon by accident. A sort of divine accident. I think that this is how most characters who are going to survive get born.’
‘But he wasn’t brave,’ said Paul Treece. ‘You said there was terror on the island. There was terror all the time. He was afraid of everything. Sleeping up trees, building fortresses with secret back-doors—and after years—years—when he’d not been troubled by any living creature, he gets the shakes over a dying goat. After he spotted the foot-print he had the shakes for two whole years. And he only started praying out of fright. He prays non-stop for twenty-eight years—out of fright. He never sits still. He’s a bundle of nerves. He lives in fear, refined and pure. He’s magnificent when the shooting starts, I agree. Smell of cordite, whites of eyes and so forth. But for a quarter of a century, waiting for the fun to start he’s a dithering, boring coward.’
‘Perhaps he did have some imagination then.’
‘Oh well—I don’t know. Instinctive cowardice I’d call it. How would you have liked to spend the years with him?’
‘Very much.’
‘You could hardly have loved him? You’d have been his good woman. He’d have been worse than the dreadful father of La Famille Suisse, which is saying something. Nobody really loved anybody—have you read Part II?’
‘Yes.’
‘Crusoe and women? He never needed a—gave a thought to a woman all those years. As for Friday—what about the way he treated Friday? Called himself a Christian and didn’t even ask his name. Gave him a new one
he’d thought up himself.’
‘That’s not un-Christian. Christians are always changing their name.’
‘“Friday”—how ridiculous. “Good Friday” I suppose. Someone will be calling it all religious allegory soon I expect. Maybe it was—though I’d doubt it, in a journalist. The Crusoe-fixion. Ha!’
‘Of course it’s not. And Defoe wasn’t just a journalist. I don’t think Crusoe was very religious as a matter of fact. He was possessed by guilt and discontent and this tremendous inborn lust for travel. He was the last man on earth to endure imprisonment on an island, but he came to terms with it. He didn’t go mad. He was brave. He was wonderful. He was like women have to be almost always, on an island. Stuck. Imprisoned. The only way to survive it is to say it’s God’s will.’
(I had had no idea that I thought all this!)
‘I agree with you about the praying,’ I hurtled on. ‘It wasn’t love of God, like we’re meant to have. It was awe and fear and at last just habit. That’s why I won’t get Confirmed—it would be just habit. That’s why I think marriage is so dull—after you’re married it becomes just habit. But they’re both a sort of crutch to help you along. You get in a mess without them. Habits.’
‘Habit and journalistic device,’ said Paul Treece. ‘The Godly element in Crusoe was only put in to hang a few sermons on. People would read anything then if it had a sermon in it. Times change. I tell you—Defoe was a journalist. You’ve glorified this book into a gospel.’
I wasn’t really listening. I was hot in the face and felt that I had to talk on and on or burst.
‘Actually, with my aunts the habit didn’t work.’ I said, ‘It wasn’t strong enough. They missed out on marriage or they muddled it and the praying got—oh, too important. They both went mad a bit I think. It’s more difficult you see. Women’s bodies are so difficult and disgusting, though they’re supposed to be so fragrant and beautiful and delicate. We have to try so much harder than men.’
‘I’ve lost you, I’m afraid,’ he said, looking dreadfully embarrassed suddenly. Before I’d mentioned women’s bodies he’d been looking handsome and excited and happy—and as delighted to be talking about Defoe as I was. Now by talking about my body I’d stopped the only real conversation I’d ever had in my life.
‘The painter at Thwaite understood,’ I said.
He recovered and his ears dimmed.
‘D’you know what Dickens said?’ He put the Sense and Sensibility back on its shelf. ‘Dickens said that Robinson Crusoe has never made anybody laugh or cry.’
‘Why does everybody read it then? I go on reading it. I have done since I was eight. Everybody loves it. Crusoe’s everybody’s hero. I laugh and I cry. I expect Dickens was jealous. Most people don’t remember when they first heard of Crusoe—that’s the test. He just always was. He’s very human and at the same time almost a god. He’s my utter hero.’
‘Oh, you get these books,’ he said, ‘books to possess you. You ought to rid yourself of him or he’ll stick fast. He’ll retard you. It’s like love. Often the book that gets you is the first you’ve really read for yourself—or maybe you pick it up at an important moment in your life—at the time of some passionate event. Like ducks. Little ducks, you know—the first thing they see when they step out of the egg, they think is their mother. Even if it’s a cow, they’ll follow it about. I live on a farm, I’ve seen it. It is an imprint. “Love” is only an imprint, most of the time.’
‘I’d love to live on a farm,’ I said.
‘That’s part of the Crusoe complex. The good hearth. Distrust it.’
‘How do you know so much about books?’
‘I was born that sort.’
‘Yes. So was I. I was lucky to come here.’
‘I’ve had to suck up to people to get any books,’ he said. ‘I’m fairly shameless. A parasite and a go-getter. Otherwise no books. We’re pretty poor at home.’
I thought, ‘He is an honest man.’ I was beginning to love him again.
‘But I’m not a duck.’ I said. ‘I don’t think Robinson Crusoe is my mother.’
‘That’s something.’ He came up near to me and touched my hair and ran a finger round the edge of my face. He patted it in a motherly sort of way.
‘But it’s true about love,’ he said. ‘It’s the girl who happens to be there at some important moment who becomes the obsession.’
‘That’s a bit unflattering.’ I moved a step back.
‘Like that morning,’ he said, giving a little jerky jump forward. ‘That extraordinary dawn. And the cows. And the rolls of mist on the river and the pink milk. They cast a spell.’
‘Yes. There was something then.’ But I thought of years berore, when the pony and trap came up out of nowhere on the sands as I had sat freezing on the seaweed.
He said, ‘I’d better be off, I suppose,’ and stepped back again. In the new talkativeness and sureness, I said, ‘You’re very cautious for such an emotional man. And a poet.’
The quiet book-room had grown quieter, the big windows blanker and whiter. The mist was beginning to shine and the sun would be through now soon. ‘I always seem to be with you in mists,’ I said.
‘Yes. Well. I had better be off. I wondered if perhaps I might write?’
‘Write? But don’t you?’
‘Write to you. You might write back if you have time. I dare say we’ll need some letters wherever we’re going. Of course, I don’t want to compromise you in any way—’
‘No. I suppose not.’
‘I have asked a number of girls to write. I wouldn’t want to—embarrass you. You’re very young. I mean—it’s early days.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Here’s Mrs Zeit’s letter.’ He handed it over, looking above my head. ‘I say, that’s a lovely drawing of you.’
‘It was done at Lady Celia’s. Well—on the way home.’
‘A surprise. I didn’t know you were so pretty. What’s the matter? Have I said something wrong?’
‘About six things,’ I said, ‘but never mind. You’d better go.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m not good at it. Talking with a girl alone. I do talk too much I know. They say I’m rather naïve. I write better.’
‘Yes I see.’
‘It’s odd–you shut away out here. You’re not at all naïve.’
‘I thought I must be, quite.’
‘No. I’m very direct,’ he said. ‘You like the direct. Defoe.’
He stood about. I thought, ‘Oh Lord, go away. You’re hopeless. Go. You’re hopeless after all.’
He turned at the foot of the steps as if he’d never move again and stood still, examining his wet boots. Water was being almost visibly sucked up from the marsh to join the soaking air. I said, ‘Wait,’ and ran back to the passage where there was a cape hanging from when Grandfather Younghusband strode the landscape in it, and I gave it to The Poultice. His body became invisible inside it, a soft, poor tortoise in a noble shell. ‘Oh jolly swish!’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them to let you have it back. Don’t like getting wet particularly. I’m not sure that I’m going to be all that keen on the outdoor aspect of this next business. Still—I expect I’ll be all right when the shooting starts. Like himself.’
‘Goodbye Paul. I will write.’
I watched the triangle of the immense cape vanish into the lifting mist, bobbing here, bobbing there through the long pools and the salt-hills. It moved in cheerful jumps and splashes. I could hear him after he had disappeared.
His letters were slow in coming, but when they eventually began to appear, continued thick and fast, first from O.T.C. camp, then from the local battalion he had joined as a private in order to get more quickly into action, and finally from France where he found himself a second lieutenant within the space of three months. The letters were very perfect—the handwriting neat and confident, sentences beautifully constructed, adjectives consciously correct. There were no endearments, only carefully-judged phrases of appreciation which had be
en looked over for a long time and sometimes, I felt, changed to give better cadences. Whole letters may have been re-drafted to achieve this—there was never a crossing out. They were exercises. But little did I care, for I read them quickly, only interested because they were letters I had received from a man. I liked the look of them waiting on the hall-table. I often didn’t open them for hours.
For during the next months, as the soldiers fell in thousands, off Belgium, I was at The New House every day, being welcomed with flamboyance by the Zeits. I turned pink and merry overnight and got Alice to put up my hair, which had become shiny and curly and taken on a life of its own. Rebecca approved me and Theo was there.
Theo was there all day. Every day. At every meal. He was quiet while the sister and mother talked and talked—so cleverly, so fast—but he seemed always to be looking at me and when I caught him looking at me he never looked away, but smiled. We walked in the gardens together and we sat together indoors and he saw me home across the marsh at night. In October he and Rebecca went up to Cambridge but I still went to the house to help Mrs Zeit with her war-work—she held something called ‘The Depot’ in her morning room, and rather-awed, respectable local ladies from the terraces rolled bandages there. Flowers came from Theo once to the yellow house, thanking me for helping his mother. He returned home before his term had ended and was closeted with her for hours.
Walking back to the yellow house with him one evening, looking at the belching Works he said, ‘I don’t want them. I don’t see them as mine. Well, the war will decide things I suppose.’
‘Shall you—do you think you’ll enlist?’
‘It’s all confused at present. I’m not sure I shall be allowed to. We have a German name. We didn’t change it like most people. They are embarrassed for us—and suspicious of us. It would look like fighting our own side we’re told—though I don’t feel it. We’re waiting.’
‘Yes. I see you can’t feel very passionately patriotic.’
‘No. Have you heard from the redoubtable Poultice?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Often.’
‘Are you—d’you mind my asking—engaged to him?’