A Man Over Forty (5 page)

‘I was frightened,' she said.

His voice when he answered, was large and comfortable, a great armchair of a voice that promised comfort and invited repose. ‘Well, now,' he said, ‘there's nothing surprising in that. Many, many people, even experienced travellers, are still secretly afraid of flying – though, as a matter of fact, aeroplanes in the sky are much safer than motor cars on a road, especially at the weekend – but there it is: a native, instinctive distrust of the flying-machine. Even I – though I've flown a
hundred thousand miles or more – even I sometimes feel a little sense of disquiet, the brief coldness of a passing shadow – the shadow of a bird, no bigger than that—'

‘But I'm not frightened of aeroplanes,' said the girl. ‘I like flying.'

‘Then what—'

‘Horses, for one thing. But it wasn't horses today.'

‘I saw none at London Airport,' said Balintore gravely. ‘But I saw you, and I saw that you were looking unhappy.'

‘I saw you too,' said the girl. ‘You're Edward Balintore, aren't you?'

‘Do you know,' he said, ‘I am still surprised when I meet people who recognize me? And usually I don't enjoy the experience: it's tiresome, it's a bore, it's an intrusion into one's privacy. But there are times – and this is one of them – when it's gratifying: very gratifying. You must tell me your name.'

‘Polly Newton.'

‘A charming name! I like euphony in a name, and yours has the melody of folk-song. And now. Miss Newton, tell me what you're frightened of.'

‘America,' she said.

On the other side of the aisle Palladis listened attentively to their conversation, and in a short-hand of his own invention recorded some of it in a notebook concealed in a copy of the Goncourt
Journal
, that he pretended to be reading.

He heard Polly Newton say she was going to New York as private secretary to a man she had met when he came to do business with her previous employer in Bucklersbury. A rich man, she said: a corporation lawyer. Not young, happily married, she had met his wife – Balintore nodded approvingly – and as well as offering her a handsome salary, he had told her that he went often to Europe, if not always to England, and never travelled without his secretary.

‘But sometimes without his wife?' said Balintore suspiciously.

‘Oh, no! He collects Old Master drawings and engravings – have you ever heard of Piranesi? I hadn't – and he buys nothing without his wife's approval.'

‘In that case,' said Balintore, ‘I don't see that you have any possible cause for alarm.'

‘America,' she said. ‘It's so big. And I've never been away from home before.'

‘You're a very lucky girl.'

‘That's what everyone told me—'

‘To be frightened, in the way you're frightened, requires imagination – and imagination is the greatest of all gifts. Without it mankind is hardly worth a second thought – animals without much physical attraction, without strength to protect ourselves: that's what we'd be without imagination. But with it, a man becomes a poet, a maker of music – or, if not that, the sort of listener, receptive and sympathetic, without whom poets and composers can't live. Imagination, though I don't want to seem pompous about it, is the truly charismatic grace, and I say again that you're a very lucky girl.'

He took her left hand in his and patted it lightly, whimsically, as if half-envious of her. Polly Newton, though impressed by what he had said – apart from the fact that she did not know the meaning of charismatic – began to look a little anxious as his grasp grew warmer; while across the aisle, in the shelter of the Goncourt
Journal
, Palladis wrote busily and wondered what Balintore's next gambit was going to be.

For a minute or two there was silence. Then Balintore sat up – returned Miss Newton's hand to her lap – and in a brisk and genial voice said, ‘In some of us, you know – and you're one, I can see that – there's a sort of universality that makes nonsense of the idea that only some parts of the world are familiar to us, while all the rest is strange and foreign. Don't believe that! Trust in yourself, and then you won't be frightened by the thought of America. You won't be frightened of anything. Because you'll realize that you're part of everything, and everything is part of you. Like Rilke's dead poet, you know—

diese Tiefen, diese Wiesen
Und diese Wasser waren sein Gesicht—

these depths (valleys, I suppose he means) and meadows and streams were his own face. And even New York, if you look at
it like that, isn't so large and terrifying, but might almost be something that you yourself have helped to make.'

Palladis put away his notebook. He knew the gambit. Balintore believed in flattering, not a girl's face or figure, but her intelligence. He was surprised, however, by Balintore's show of enterprise. He seemed to be recovering from the gloom and
défaitisme
of his nervous collapse with unexpected speed. Palladis was a little worried, as well as surprised.

The attentive stewardess came slowly down the aisle, and Balintore said, ‘I would like a whisky and soda, and for Miss Newton – what would you like?'

‘No, nothing.'

‘If Miss Newton has quite recovered,' said the stewardess, ‘perhaps she would prefer to go back to her own seat.'

Her recovery could hardly be disputed, and at the stewardess's suggestion she made a move to get up and said, ‘Yes, I must go. I'm feeling quite well now. And thank you – thank you both.'

‘But you must have a drink before you leave us! Sit down again, I implore you.'

‘It's irregular,' said the stewardess.

‘Most pleasure is, from adultery to a Devonshire lane. Now be a good girl, and don't argue! I want a whisky and soda, and for Miss Newton – well, at this time of the day I'd suggest a cherry brandy.'

‘Well, for you, Mr Balintore. I wouldn't do it for anyone else.'

Polly Newton sat back in her seat, but with a look on her face of disapproval, of prim reluctance; and Balintore said, ‘Your address in New York: I must have that before you go. And in case – just in case you feel lonely, and want to write to someone – I'll give you my address in Jamaica.'

Five minutes later she insisted on returning to the tourist cabin, and Balintore showed a tetchy disappointment. Like about of indigestion his ill temper returned, and he looked at his fellow passengers with sour disfavour. At thirty thousand feet, above cloud that shimmered like pack-ice, the sky was still a luminous dark blue, and its light derided the colours of women with tinted hair, cheeks unnaturally pink, and arbitrary black
eyelashes. Misanthropy came in upon the heels of disappointment, and humanity offended him by its ungainly forms and recurrent weaknesses.

That well-fed man, stooping to pick up a book: how gross his hinderlands! That over-dressed, lank ladder of a woman, going yet again to the lavatory: how ignoble her incontinence! And that girl, returning from the other lavatory – dark glasses, a painted pout and hair a rook's nest of carefully ordered untidiness – what idiocy to parade such affectations! He said to Palladis, ‘In nothing is God more god-like than in his patience.'

The air grew ruffled, and invisible turbulence rocked the aeroplane. The stewardess, unwearied in benevolence, distributed button-holes of red roses, and looking through the window Balintore saw, far beneath, a land grey and white – the wrinkled grey of an elephant's hide, patched with snow – and a sharp-edged island that seemed to have fallen by hazard into a cold bright sea. They were crossing the coast-line of America.

Five hours were subtracted from their watches, and presently a long descent took them down to Idlewild a hundred and twenty minutes after they had left London.

In London the air had been cold. At Idlewild it was 27° below freezing point on the Fahrenheit scale, and a fresh breeze blew upon them with an arctic draught as they walked towards the airport building. But Balintore would not hurry. Indifferent to the gelid wind, he stood, bare-headed, to look this way and that at the stooped and ruffled figures who made what haste they could – impeded by parcels and handbags, by lifting skirts and whipping scarves – to the shelter of the nearest door.

‘Where is she? Where has she gone?' he asked. ‘I can't see her anywhere.'

‘For God's sake,' said Palladis through chattering teeth,
‘come inside,' and dragged him, still protesting, into a waitingroom as hot as the Persian Gulf and odorous as a boxers' gymnasium.

Separated from passengers who were disembarking in New York, they were subject only to mild questioning and minor indignities; but for Balintore separation was a pain indeed. With Palladis beside him – Palladis afraid of his getting into trouble – he pushed and threaded his way through groups of people who now were all taking off their coats, unwinding mufflers, wiping their brows; and presently found a door into a larger hall where luggage was being assembled on long counters. At the far end they saw Polly Newton, but the door was guarded by an official of ponderous build and unsympathetic appearance who told them, ‘Passengers in transit not allowed beyond this door.'

‘Isn't this a free country?' demanded Balintore.

‘Only to those who pay taxes.'

‘There's a girl over there whom I want to speak to.'

‘If she wouldn't listen to you over the Atlantic ocean, she won't listen here.'

‘I want to tell her—'

‘No dice,' said the official, and gently but persistently pushed him away. Palladis told him there was a bar on the floor above, and Balintore, still grumbling, followed reluctantly. Palladis ordered two Bourbon Old Fashioneds.

Palladis looked at the pictures in a copy of
Life
, and Balintore nursed his unhappiness. ‘I'm worried,' he said. ‘Worried about that girl. I should have told her – one thinks of these things too late – that if she found life in New York intolerable, or even unpleasant, she could come to Jamaica. I should have offered to pay her fare—'

‘You're supporting three women already. You can't afford any more.'

‘One should think of others, not of oneself.'

‘You're still an invalid, or little better.'

‘You don't need robust health to be capable of sympathy,' said Balintore; and sitting back in his chair looked through mournful eyes at some private vision of the world, and its misery that would not let him rest. Several people, passing
their table, paused or turned to stare at him again, but he seemed unaware of their interest.

A mechanical voice summoned passengers on Flight 504, and they went out again to face the frozen wind and reembark. Balintore fell asleep and woke three hours later to see through the dusk beneath them the sprawling shape of an island that lay flat as a rusty tray on the lapsing sea. They landed at Nassau, and were gratified by the dark warmth of the Bahamas.

Balintore, snuffing the kindly air, forgot his glimpse of the world's unkindness and declared, ‘There's no artificial comfort to compare with the luxury of nature – if you go to the right place, that is. I suppose Jamaica will be warmer than this?'

‘Not much, I think. Not up in the hills, where we're going.'

‘I may decide to stay there. If, that is, I can find a suitable house. Not a big house, but comfortable. With a view, of course, and not too far from a good beach. In a climate like this I could settle down to contemplation. Serious contemplation, for three or four years at least. The great vacancy, the vast and terrifying emptiness in modern life, is our failure to find time for contemplation. But in Jamaica – well, I don't know, of course, but I'm beginning to feel that this notion of yours was a good one. Perhaps I shall live, my dear Guy, to feel everlastingly grateful to you.'

‘I've given you occasion for gratitude before now,' said Palladis.

‘Yes, yes, I know that. But this journey – though I started unwillingly – may be the beginning of the most formative chapter of my life.'

The remainder of their flight was brief. In the darkness they bisected Cuba, they passed over unseen little scraps of island in the warmth of Caribbean waves, and came down with a grating jar on the airfield near Montego Bay.

There was some confusion in the customs hall – a noisy woman who had lost her handbag was loudly blaming her husband for his carelessness – but within half an hour they had escaped the ritual of arrival, and a large, genial Negro, cap in hand, was telling them that a motor car waited at the door.

‘You're Mr Scroope's driver?' asked Palladis.

‘Yes, sir, that's right. And I've come here, at Mr Weatherby Scroope's own express command, to bring you to his house.'

‘Is it a long drive?' asked Balintore.

‘No, sir, not long. About three hours, no more'n that.'

It was a large American car that waited for them: not smartly new, but well used and beginning to look a little shabby. Their luggage filled the boot and the front seat beside their black driver. Solicitously he helped them in, and despite the warmth of the air put on a pair of leather gloves. He drove them swiftly to the main road, and turned eastward.

To their left an ebony sea glimmered fitfully under a young moon. The country was open marshland with a strong salt smell. They threaded a long village where dogs barked shrilly, and to the right saw mountains rising in a dark and ragged mass against the starlit sky. They skirted a broad bay with a selvage of white sand, and then their headlights opened a tunnel through the darkness beneath great trees. Another village, with lighted shops or bazaars.

Balintore fell asleep again, and was wakened by the car's rougher movement. They were now climbing a road with a loose and broken surface. The headlights showed tall forest on the one side, and on the other pierced the tops of trees that grew on a precipitous slope beneath them. The car went down on its springs with a bang, and a moment later they were bounced up to its roof. They swung round a corner on the edge of a deep and tangled gulf of darkness.