A Man Over Forty (10 page)

‘And later on, when you went to Ceylon—'

‘Tom Bulfin was dead by then. After the Arakan affair was over, there was the Chindit fly-in. Tom went as an observer, and didn't come back.'

‘In Ceylon, where you met Betty—'

‘She had been engaged to him.'

‘Yes, I know. But were you in Intelligence there, or Public Relations?'

‘Public Relations. I had been asked to stay on. Mountbatten thought it was important. And he was right, of course.'

Mary came in to tell them in her deep voice – her teeth a gleam in the lamplight – that dinner was served; and they ate their soup in silence.

‘Your friend Bulfin—'

‘You mean Chris?'

‘Yes.'

‘I went to see him after I came home,' said Balintore. ‘I think now it was a mistake. I went to tell him what I could about his brother's death. He was talented and very brave: wounded and decorated in Norway, right at the beginning, then wounded again in Burma. That's how he came to me. Well, I wanted to say how much we all thought of him – the usual thing – but Chris didn't take it in the usual way.'

‘He said something to me about missing papers, or a lost manuscript. He was rather incoherent, but he seems to have a grudge against you.'

‘For which there is no substance or foundation whatsoever! The man's a fool. A fool with a mind of darkness where phantoms breed. And jealous! Jealous of success because he thinks success can't occur in nature or be won with honesty. There was a time when he tried – but no, he didn't go as far as blackmail. Blackmail was in his mind, but I showed him I wasn't to be frightened, and he thought better of it. But now
he turns up again, to spoil a good day, and spoil, perhaps, my hope of living in the sun. To hell with him! But they're lightweights, both of them – creatures of no account – and a week from now they may have gone, gone forever, with some new notion to steer their addle minds.'

They finished dinner, walked on the rough lawn and counted fireflies, and returned to the veranda. ‘Where's the whisky?' said Balintore. ‘I'm going to take a long, stiff peg, a couple of sleeping pills, and forget them.'

He was not allowed to forget them for long, however. They arrived on the following afternoon, and for several minutes Balintore and Palladis listened, without comment, to Betty Bulfin while she spoke, in terms of extreme disparagement, of the rough approach to the Great House; and then, with extravagant admiration, of the views it commanded. At some little distance from them her husband stared silently, and with what appeared to be a brooding dislike, at the far-off sea. Burnt scarlet by the sun, the back of his neck looked sore.

As if to embrace the whole scene, Betty extended her arms to their full length and exclaimed, ‘Isn't it wonderful? I don't know how many times I've said to Chris, “Why, it's just like Ceylon, only better! Far better.” All these flowering trees, I mean. And coming up here, why, it's like going up to Kandy, isn't it, Ned? Well, it would be if the Hotel Suisse was round the corner, and the Temple of the Tooth, and an Officers' Club, like the one at Peradeniya. Oh, those were the days! I was in the Wrens,' she told Palladis. ‘An officer, of course. And Ned was a major then. The first time I saw him he was bright yellow with mepacrine, except where he had nettle rash. You saw a lot of funny sights in the war.'

Then, suddenly, her temper changed – subdued by memory of another sort – and soberly she said, ‘You'd been in Burma, of course – well, Arakan or Bengal or somewhere – that's why he was yellow: they all had to take mepacrine every day – and you came to see me, and told me how Tom had been killed.'

There was a little pause before she added, ‘That's really why we've come here: to talk about Tom. Well, we wanted to see where you were living – Mr Bone told us how to get here – but really it was because Chris and I – oh, I don't know how to
put it! He'll have to tell you himself. Chris! Come and explain what we want to talk about.'

Bulfin walked slowly towards them and said, ‘I'm not a man who likes making trouble – either for myself or anyone else – but I believe in justice, and justice should be done even if it does cause a little trouble.'

‘Is this going to be the old cock-and-bull tale all over again?' asked Balintore. ‘I told you, a long time ago, that your suspicions – all your libellous and malignant suspicions – reminded me of nothing so much as the description of Earth in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis: when Earth was without form, and void. But if you want to repeat your story – so far as you have a story – and hear it refuted, yet again, we had better sit down and make ourselves comfortable.'

‘Would you prefer me to leave you with your friends?' asked Palladis.

‘No, of course not. Stay and listen. It's a story that ought to amuse you.'

They left the lawn and found chairs in the shade of the veranda; where Betty was momentarily diverted by a small humming-bird that flew closely round her head, attracted by the expensive scent she used.

‘That might make a good advertisement,' she said. ‘There may be money in it, Chris! ”Even a humming-bird's deceived” – how's that for a caption?'

No one responded to her pleasantry, and her husband, still looking out to sea, said heavily, ‘Last night Betty and I had a long conversation, and in consequence of adding up what she told me, and what I told her, we both decided it was necessary to have another talk with you.'

‘Whatever your addition comes to, the sum can't alter the facts.'

‘There may be two opinions about that. Now in the first place, my brother had told me – in his letters, that is – that he was writing a book.'

‘Who wasn't, in those days?'

‘When you published a book, you called it
Scorpio my Star
. Well, Tom was born under Scorpio.'

‘He wasn't the only one. Scorpio's the symbol of darkness.
Scorpio in its claws holds Libra the Balance over waste land. Read Virgil, first book of the Georgics, if you don't believe me.'

‘I don't know anything about Virgil, but I've read your book – or what you called your book – and a lot of things that happen in it are things that happened to Tom.'

‘Things that happened between 1939 and 1945 happened to a great number of people.'

‘But the girl in Chapter Nineteen,' said Betty, ‘is me. You see, when I went out to Ceylon, Tom got a week's leave, and he was there to meet me. And that – well, that's how he got something else to write about.'

‘This is what she told me last night,' said Bulfin, ‘and I can tell you this: it didn't make me feel any the happier to hear her say so. But it was all a long time ago – I had to own that – and I respected her honesty for admitting it.'

He nodded his head, slowly, as if in solemn recognition of her fault and his broad tolerance; and Betty, looking lovingly towards him, murmured, ‘Oh, Chris, how good you are!'

‘Do you suppose that in the whole course of the war your wife was the only girl to be seduced in the Galle Face Hotel?' asked Balintore.

‘Now you be careful what you say!'

‘I think it's you who should be careful. You came here with the evident intention of blackmailing me—'

‘Oh, no, I didn't! I don't want your money. I've enough for my needs, and a bit to spare. All I'm looking for is justice. If my brother Tom wrote that book, he ought to get the credit for it.'

‘And he did write it!' exclaimed Betty. ‘Because no one else could have said what he said about me – and that's true, Chris!'

‘Are you really sure that you can identify yourself with the girl in Chapter Nineteen?'

‘Well, I knew he was writing a book, because he told me so, and it isn't likely that he'd leave out what happened – well, what happened in that chapter.'

‘There was another girl, earlier in the novel.'

‘She was a brunette.'

‘Do they react differently?'

‘Well, he did!'

‘What I want to know,' said Bulfin, ‘is what happened to the manuscript that Tom left behind him when he flew in to join the Chindits. His effects – a few effects – were sent home to me; but there was no manuscript.'

‘When an officer is killed, or dies on active service,' said Balintore, ‘every effort is made to send home, to his nearest relative, such small personal effects as a signet ring, a cigarette case, photographs, a pocket-book, and so forth. In the circumstances of active service it's usually impossible to send more than that, and his other possessions may be sold or given away, or – if they're of no value – destroyed.'

‘Do you know if a substantial manuscript, belonging to Tom, was destroyed?'

‘I have no knowledge of that having happened, and it could hardly have been done without my knowledge.'

‘Then somebody stole it,' said Bulfin, ‘and the curious thing is that a novel which might have been written by Tom, was published under your name.'

‘That's slander. Do you realize that?'

‘Sometimes the only way to establish the truth is to publish a slander.'

‘Why have you been so dilatory? It's fifteen years since
Scorpio My Star
began to shine.'

‘I didn't know then what I know now,' said Bulfin. ‘I wasn't married to Betty then.'

‘I'm ever so sorry, Ned,' said Betty. ‘You were kind to me in Kandy, and I'm still grateful, I really am. But it couldn't have been anyone except Tom who wrote about that night in the Galle Face Hotel.'

‘You're flattering yourself. You think you're unique, but in those circumstances no one is. And your husband—'

‘He's a good husband to me, and I'm not going to hear anything said against him!'

‘He's deluding himself, and misleading you. You've come here on a fool's errand.'

‘Come on, love,' said Bulfin, ‘we're wasting our time here.' He turned to Balintore and spoke with muted fury: ‘But you'll hear from me!'

The Morning broke in opalescent beauty, and expanded into a dome of green and cerulean tranquillity. Balintore and Palladis forgot the sullenness and ill-humour that their visitor of the day before had left behind; and after breakfast drove to the Morgan Arms at Ocho Rios – a longish drive – ordered their luncheon, and swam in the leaf-green water of the guarded bay.

Within a little while – as if the systole and diastole of the gently rising sea had reassured their minds – they were enjoying a borrowed share of the equanimity that ocean gives to swimming things. ‘It's their reward for resisting the temptations of evolution,' said Palladis – and could look with some detachment at the embarrassment of life ashore.

‘I discount all human motives,' said Balintore on his back, splashing the calm water with his large, pink-tipped feet.

‘They have to be assessed,' said Palladis. ‘I am an
aficionado
of the human struggle, but I like to watch it from a sheltered seat.'

‘That man,' said Balintore, ‘pretends that he wants justice done to his dead brother. But what he's looking for is a reflected fame for himself.'

‘I rather like them,' said Palladis. ‘Both of them. I think he's relatively honest – well pleased with his success in life – and she is simple, kind, and uncritical. Not wholly admirable people, but likeable.'

‘Vegetables and the sea are all that's uncorrupted,' said Balintore, ‘and salt water needs a vegetable corrective.'

They swam ashore, and a tall, very thin waiter, his bare black feet squeezing the sand between his toes, brought them rum punches; and two more. Then they took air-filled, buoyant mattresses from the beach, went back to sea, and floated on the ocean pulse.

‘How much truth was there in their story?' asked Palladis.

‘A little, only a little,' said Balintore.

‘Had Tom Bulfin written a novel?'

‘You couldn't call it a novel.'

‘But he left a manuscript?'

‘A miscellany in a cardboard box. A chaos of impressionism, description, interminable dialogue, autobiography, and characters who couldn't remember their own names.'

‘The rough material for
Scorpio My Star?'

‘He said to me, the last time I saw him, “I may not have a chance to finish this. It needs a lot of revision. Take a look at it, and if you think it's worth anything – and if I don't come back – give it to Betty. But if it's no good, then burn it or keep it as a souvenir.” We were very friendly, and more than once I'd kept him out of trouble. He was talented, in a loose, offhanded way; very brave, and quite undisciplined. I saved him from court martial, I paid his debts, I gave him an extra ten days' leave – on medical grounds – when he had overstayed his leave; and to show his gratitude he made me his residuary legatee if I decided that his estate – his manuscript – had no value.'

‘And your decision gave you the material for a very successful novel.'

‘It had no value as he left it. I had to put it into shape: cut it, and pull it about, and rewrite. He had no sense of style, he didn't know how to organize a story. He would interrupt the story of a battle to write an essay on strategy—'

‘Like Tolstoy.'

‘He was no Tolstoy. But Chris Bulfin wouldn't have appreciated that. Chris Bulfin wouldn't know the difference between a novel and a hotch-potch of happy notions—'

‘Sometimes it isn't easy.'

‘– so there was no point in trying to tell him. Explanation's wasted where there is no understanding.'

‘So you took your legacy—'

‘And said nothing. Do you feel ready for lunch?'

They swam again in the afternoon, and fell into conversation with a visitor newly arrived from Kansas City, who introduced them to his wife, her mother, and an old school-friend of his wife who was travelling with them. Balintore, in his most genial and ebullient mood, gave them a great deal of useful information about Jamaica, and corrected some curious misapprehensions they had about the constitutional structure of
the British Commonwealth. Dark was falling when they returned to the Great House, and found among their letters two of particular interest.