A Man Over Forty (11 page)

Balintore's came from Polly Newton in New York, and he read it twice with an expression of deepening concern. He had written to her several times, and received brief, punctual, and dull replies in a very attractive, highly mannered script. She was quite happy, and found her work interesting; but said no more about it. Her employer – his name was Evershrub – was kind and considerate, and his wife had taken her to the theatre. The weather was very cold, and her room, though nicely furnished, was terribly overheated.…

This display of emotional incapacity, as it seemed, had gone far to alienate Balintore's sympathy, and almost relieved him of anxiety about Miss Newton's safety. For why should anyone worry himself about a girl of such indifferent sensibility that New York – her first sight and sensation of New York – had failed to elicit rhapsody and awe in letters of passionate exclamation? She was, he decided – or had nearly decided – of poorer quality than he had supposed. But now he had cause to worry again, and be anxious too; for here in this letter was abundance of emotion, a high pitch of excitement that loosened the fine structure of her Italianate writing.

It was, however, not New York that excited her – she said nothing of New York – but the prospect of going home. Mr Evershrub was going to London, then to Paris and northern Italy, and he would take her with him. ‘He says he is pleased with my work, and he feels that I understand him better than any secretary he has ever employed! In London, he says, he couldn't get on without me. And so, after what seems an age since I left – though really it's only seven weeks tomorrow – I'm going home again, and no one will ever know, because I haven't the words to explain it, how thrilled and delighted I am. Mrs Evershrub, too, is being very kind, and says she is so glad that Herbert (who is Mr Evershrub) will have someone with him who knows her way about in London. She will be joining us some time later, in three or four weeks perhaps.'

‘Look at that!' exclaimed Balintore, and gave the letter to Palladis. ‘It's what I feared from the beginining! From my
very first sight of her, I knew the poor girl was walking into danger. And here's the proof of it. That woman, his alleged or so-called wife – and this I told you before – is nothing more than his procuress. As for his Old Masters, you can be pretty sure why he collects them, and what they're used for: “Come up and see my Tiepolo!”'

‘A friend of mine who collected French inlaid furniture used to say “Come up and see my Buhl.” '

‘This is not a time for joking. Unless someone intervenes, Polly Newton is going straight to her ruin.'

‘Even before the Relief of Mafeking, that's a remark which might have raised some doubtful eyebrows.'

‘We live in dissolute times, I know that, but virtue hasn't vanished from the world, and a girl who's naturally virtuous—'

‘Are they?'

‘You're trying to be cynical, but cynicism doesn't suit you—'

‘I'm trying to consider a problem of my own. You're not the only man who has female correspondents, and if my cousin Honoria is telling the truth—'

‘Who is she?'

‘Her name's Honoria O'Turk. She's a widow. Her husband, was The Turk of Mayo—'

‘He was
what?'

‘It's one of those old Irish family titles, like The Knight of Glyn, or The MacGillicuddy of the Reeks. He died three or four years ago, and now Honoria, trying to keep a small impoverished estate alive till the boy's grown up – he's an only son – finds herself in real danger. Not of seduction, that doesn't happen in Ireland – or if it does, the girl goes to England, and the National Health Service looks after her. No, danger in Ireland is more dramatic, and Honoria's afraid of being blown up.'

‘I thought the IRA had been disbanded?'

‘It isn't the IRA, it's a geologist. She says the house is being undermined by a neighbour who's a geologist, and she wants me to go and give her advice.'

‘You can't leave me!'

‘No, I realise that. I'm under contract.'

‘And in any case, her danger doesn't appear to be very real. Neither real nor immediate.'

‘An Irish geologist seems to me a lot mere dangerous than an American collector of Old Master drawings – and nothing is more immediate than explosion.'

Their conversation was interrupted by Mary, who came in with sinuous, apologetic movements of her tall and dignified body to say, ‘I sorry, sir! I forgot to bring you this letter, which those people left.'

‘What people?'

‘Those people in that red motor-car. They come yesterday, they come today, and you wasn't in. But he sat down and wrote a letter, and said I was to give it to you. And I wasn't thinking about nothing at all, sir, and I clean forgot all about it. But here it is, sir, and now dinner is served.'

Shrimps, sea-cold and firm, with a well-made mayonnaise, were their first course, but Balintore hardly tasted it. ‘Listen to this,' he said, and read aloud the hurriedly written letter he had taken from a half-sealed envelope. ‘ “We're sorry to have missed you this afternoon, because we'll have to have another talk, and the sooner the better. We're driving on to Port Antonio, and tonight we'll stay there, and perhaps go down the Rio Grande tomorrow. Could you put us up tomorrow night? We'll look in about five o'clock, and if you find it inconvenient to have us for the night, don't hesitate to say so. But we want to be sure of an opportunity to have another long talk with you. Betty is now even more determined than I am that justice should be done to my brother Tom, and if that's to come about, the memorial of his own work must be inscribed with his own name. Looking forward to seeing you again, and thrashing out how this can be done. Yours etc., Chris Bulfin.”'

‘Dinner for four tomorrow,' said Palladis. ‘Do you want me to order it, or shall we leave it to Mary?'

‘They are not going to dine here, and most certainly they're not going to sleep here! I shan't be here when they come.'

‘Why not? Sooner or later you'll have to face them, and if your conscience is clear—'

‘It's more difficult than that. It's easy enough to clear one's
conscience, but to clear someone else's understanding is a very different thing.'

After some ill-joined argument they failed to reach agreement – an admirable chicken risotto that Mary brought them was unappreciated – and having drunk a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy – having walked on the lawn for ten minutes to smoke a cigarette and look at the luminous white trumpet blooms of the datura tree – Palladis went to his bed, and left Balintore on the veranda, drinking whisky and soda in sullen silence.

It was not very late – it was barely midnight – when Balintore beat heavily on Palladis' bedroom door, and came in to find, to his surprise, Palladis sitting at a table on which, still busily writing, he had filled some eight or ten closely written sheets.

‘I thought you'd be in bed. You ought to be asleep,' he said.

‘I've been doing a little historical research,' said Palladis, ‘and I'm writing up my notes.'

‘On Jamaica?'

‘On Jamaica and its visitors, from Columbus and Henry Morgan to the present time.'

‘We're leaving,' said Balintore.

‘When?'

‘Now. Tomorrow – or today if it's after twelve – because I'm not going to stay here and play Saint Sebastian to a couple of malignant Bulfins who want to sit about, drinking our rum, and throwing poisoned darts at me.'

‘Are you frightened of them?'

‘No! But I'm not going to subject myself to vain, unnecessary torment. I'm going to get out, clear out, bug out! We're leaving tomorrow.'

‘Where shall we go?'

‘I don't know. I'll decide that in the morning. But I want to be packed, and ready to leave, at seven o'clock.'

‘This is an island: you remember that?'

‘An island with several different air services. And I have written a letter that Mary will give to Bulfin when he calls. Would you like to read it?'

Palladis took the sheet of paper and read: ‘Dear Chris, You
will be, alas, too late. We leave, early tomorrow morning, on a lecture tour that will take me to Caracas, Maracaibo, Bogota, and Quito – and possibly down the coast as far as Valparaiso. I have always wanted to see Chile. But if not there – which, I admit, doesn't seem probable – perhaps we shall meet elsewhere.'

‘You are,' said Palladis, ‘a Calvinist among liars.'

‘You mean predestined?'

‘I mean that you lie with the conviction of predestination.'

All The servants stood waving goodbye to them – Mary in tears – and the solidly respectable chauffeur who, seven weeks before, had met them at Montego Bay, drove them to Kingston.

At the foot of the rough hill Balintore exclaimed, ‘Stop, stop! We must go back, I forgot to tip them.'

‘I did that,' said Palladis.

‘But I too—'

‘I tipped them lavishly. With your money.'

They drove on, and soon were uncomfortably warm. They were wearing heavy clothes, because Balintore had decided to stay in New York for a few days.

‘To see Polly Newton?' Palladis had asked.

‘It would be absurd to go there, and make no effort to see her,' Balintore answered coldly.

They booked seats in an aeroplane which would take off in the early evening, and spent the day in an hotel poised high above Kingston on a hillside carved into terraces and excavated to make a long and artificially azure swimming-pool. One end, to exaggerate its hue, was overhung by a rampart of crimson bougainvillea and a flaming poinciana that daunted, and seemed to thrust away, the brilliance of the sky. Elsewhere in gardened copses were frangipane and violet jacaranda, trumpet vines, yellow hibiscus, and the curiously imagined shrimp plant. Among the scintillant reflexions of many coloured
petals Balintore and Palladis swam in the long, warm pool, and were acutely conscious of the luxury they were forsaking.

‘Was it Mantegna,' said Balintore, ‘who painted a damned lugubrious picture of the Expulsion from Paradise?'

‘Masaccio,' said Palladis.

‘Well, whoever it was, I feel like Adam.'

‘He had no choice – but you had.'

‘No,' said Balintore sombrely. ‘I couldn't live with those vulgar inquisitioners round the corner: their questions pattering, day after day, like water-drops in a Chinese torture scene. I couldn't endure it, so I had to go – we had to go – but I feel as glum as Adam in that picture by – who did you say?'

‘Masaccio,' said Palladis.

In the aeroplane Balintore fell fast asleep, and Palladis, pulling a notebook from his pocket, began to write. ‘Once again,' he wrote, ‘he has shown his almost indecent power of recuperation. Seven weeks ago he left London as if the Furies were at his heels: Furies released from their lair by his invitation. He was afraid of flying, afraid to think of the Atlantic thirty thousand feet below us, and only the greater fear of pursuit by phantom detectives, with serpents in their hair and tears of blood in their eyes, persuaded him to risk his life in a machine which, to a simple pragmatical person like myself, seemed eminently safe.

‘But that sort of nervousness was only a symptom of whatever disease or lesion – mental or physical – he was suffering from; and now he's cured of it. He makes up his mind, coldly and with a semblance of reason, to leave Jamaica in order to escape from two people whose joint knowledge menaces his security: or the security of his reputation.

‘It's obvious, I think, that their suspicions come as close to the truth as his own account of the genesis of
Scorpio My Star
. Much of it was written, and most of it imagined or invented, by Tom Bulfin, who conveniently flew into Burma to be killed. It's possible that Bulfin's manuscript has survived, and I shall try to find it. But now I must think of the future rather than the past. He has recovered physical health and self-assurance – Jamaica has done that for him – and out of a Balintore-full-of-confidence
anything may hatch.' I had better cable to my mother and ask her to send me some money, in case I am left behind, he thought.

Balintore woke as a stewardess paused beside them with a tray of drinks; and Palladis put away his notebook.

‘The Henry James,' said Balintore, ‘is a very comfortable hotel in a good situation. I've stayed there before, and at this time of year it isn't likely to be overcrowded. I'm looking forward to a few days in New York – though I'm extremely sorry to have left Jamaica.'

‘How long do you think of staying?'

‘It all depends. It all depends on – no, not so much on circumstances as events.'

From the darkness above it, New York was a galaxy more brilliant than the Milky Way, and from Idlewild to Manhattan a prolonged dazzlement of light and contrary movement on the many-laned highway – a ceaseless interchange of swift, bright shuttles on a loom of inscrutable purpose – till a toll bridge and a black river led them to the vast and multitudinously tenanted ramparts of the city; where a brisk welcome at the Hotel Henry James conducted them to the suite reserved for Mr Balintore high above East 54th Street.

Balintore, at the telephone, asked for a bottle of Old Granddad. It was brought, with a bucket of ice, and presently, when the impact of New York's enormity had been cushioned, they went to bed in rooms extravagantly heated in mockery, as it seemed, of the angry snowflakes that spat against their windows.

In the morning the sun shone in sub-arctic brilliance, and after breakfast Balintore said, ‘Let us go and look at the city.'

‘Have you spoken to Polly Newton yet?'

‘No,' said Balintore, ‘not yet. New York demands attention first – and it might be a mistake, a tactical error, to ring her immediately after arrival. I want to see her, of course, but I don't want to show what she, or any girl, might misread as undue eagerness. Youthful impulsiveness gets you nowhere. Juvenile impatience shuts the door. I'm not going to make that mistake. No, no. We'll wait a day or two, and this morning we'll look up and let the roof-tops take our breath away. We
might see what's new – whether monstrous or agreeable – at the Guggenheim Museum.'