Contango (Ill Wind) (6 page)

Few places could have been more helpful to the ripening of acquaintance
than the Jungfraujoch. In the restricted area round the station and hotel
there was little to do except send off picture-postcards, peer through the
telescopes at distant skiers, and enjoy the novel combination of blazing
sunshine and deep snow. Miss Faulkner found renewed opportunities of talking
to Mr. Brown, and Mr. Brown no opportunities at all of escape. It was typical
of her that, however much she might let her imagination soar as to his
possible identity, she perceived quite clearly that he was not—not
yet, at any rate—attracted by her. Probably, she decided, he was not a
man who cared for women at all. But she was far from being daunted. If you
wanted to get anything in this world, she had discovered, you usually had to
set out in pursuit of it—quite shamelessly, if need be. This certainly
applied to such things as headships of schools, presidencies of societies,
and political candidatures; no doubt also to friendship. She had once read
somewhere that liking other people was half the battle towards making them
like you, and the theory gave her confidence to go “all out” in
getting to know this man. Why not, if she wanted to?

She certainly made the most of her time during that long, hot afternoon
two miles high. Not only were the topographical but also the meteorological
circumstances favourable; there was something exquisite in that hard, dry,
sunlit brilliance, some sense of being suspended above and beyond the normal
earth. She basked with him on the edge of a rock and gazed over the
ten—or was it twenty?— miles of snowy wilderness; then they
turned their tinted glasses on the knife-edge of the Jungfrau summit, its
outline crystal-yellow against a storm-green sky. Mr. Brown talked about
mountains and said he would like to do some climbing in the Alps; he had had
a little experience elsewhere, though not where there was snow. Some young
climbers at his hotel, he said, had asked him to join their expeditions, but
he had so far declined because he felt it might be too strenuous for him;
after this, however, he thought he might perhaps give himself a trial if he
were invited again. Which gave her the chance of asking: “Are you
staying long, then?” And he answered: “I don’t really know.
I—at the moment, that is—I haven’t decided.”

She could not resist a further probe. “Of course, if you’re
taking a rest-cure, or recovering from an illness, or anything like that, I
daresay you oughtn’t to climb.”

“No, there’s no reason of that kind.”

“Perhaps you’re one of those lucky people who’re never
ill?”

“But for occasional bouts of malaria, I keep pretty well, I must
say.”

“Malaria’s bad, isn’t it? I suppose you picked it up out
East?”

“Er—yes.”

“During the War? I know several men who did.”

“I didn’t.”

He said that almost rudely. But she did not mind. They travelled back to
Interlaken together, and all the way she kept the conversation going,
somewhat to the continued neglect of her people. She did not mind that,
either. She felt she had badgered the man quite enough about his private
affairs, and must now set herself out to make up for it by being interesting
and amusing. She more than partially succeeded, for she was well-informed,
and had a good command of words as well as a retentive memory for the bright
sayings of others. Her account of Soviet Russia, for instance, which she had
visited for ten days on a lightning tour of co-operative societies, made him
laugh several times. At the end, when they separated for their respective
hotels, she said, with an air of suddenly realising it: “I say, I do
hope I haven’t bored you. I’m afraid I sometimes get rather
carried away by these big topics.”

“Not at all,” he answered, gravely, and added, with a ready
smile: “At least you’ve given me plenty to think about…. Good
night.”

“Perhaps we shall meet again if you’re staying on
here?”

“Perhaps so. Yes, certainly we may.”

She hastily changed for dinner and faced at the dining-table a group of
faces that eyed her none too cordially. The story that she had spent most of
the day talking to a man from the hotel opposite had evidently spread. She
decided to be particularly charming; indeed, she was—she was almost
radiant. Then, if not before, her case could have been definitely
diagnosed.

Miss Faulkner was by no means ignorant of love. She had been in love, and
she had also read about it, not only in novels, but in physiological and
psychological text-books. She had skimmed through the better-known works of
Freud, Jung, Adler, Krafft-Ebbing, Havelock Ellis, Malinowski, and Stopes;
she knew all about the Trobriand Islanders, and she was aware that the
perception of beauty in moonlight or Mozart was largely an affair of the
glandular secretions. Like most women possessed of her type of ambition, she
fully realised the likelihood that she would never marry; nor did the
prospect worry her much. Apart from the fact that she could not do so and
keep her job, the ordinary routine of married life—shopping, babies,
and cinema matinées—gave her no thrills of anticipated bliss. If she
were ever to accept a man, he would have to be of an exceptional kind, and as
that kind was not very likely to come her way, she was quite reconciled to
remaining single. She liked children, but in mass rather than individually;
and though she was certainly not undersexed, a good deal of what might have
been sexual went out of her in other forms of energy. Sublimation, of course;
that was another of the things she knew all about. And besides, in these days
(1930) one need not be a prude. She did not object to an occasional
flirtation, and she had, in her late twenties, adventured rather more than
tentatively with a certain university extension lecturer who was now a Labour
M.P. It had been her one practical experiment in a subject which she knew
well enough in theory, and she had been hit pretty hard when he left her for
a fat-legged Jewess who had written a banned novel. For a few days afterwards
she had been unconsolable, weeping a good deal, and explaining to her
teaching staff that she was on the verge of a breakdown from overwork. By the
following week, however, she had salvaged most of her serenity at the cost of
a rather greater urge to sublimation than ever. It worked well, indeed, this
doing without men; and its very success reinforced her determination to make
no surrender but to the most superior applicant.

Miss Faulkner’s attitude towards Mr. Brown was governed, therefore,
by conditions perfectly well known to herself. She was attracted, and she was
aware that the attraction was to a large extent physical; she liked the
man’s tallness, his distinguished, if not exactly handsome, features,
his quiet voice, his rare but satisfying smile. The fastidious and slightly
snobbish part of her was also attracted; she liked his well-dressed dignity,
his accent, his courtesy, his old-fashioned readiness to treat her as a lady
for no other reason than that she was a woman. Thinking the matter over in
bed that night, she was very candid with herself. She was smitten; yes, most
decidedly; indeed, she couldn’t get the man’s image out of her
head. The way he had sat with her at the Jungfraujoch; no doubt it would give
her a pang whenever she saw the place again. On the other hand, facing facts
quite squarely, she came to the rather depressing conclusion that he probably
wasn’t very clever. His finding Shaw’s book dull, for
instance— not that that by itself proved much, but it linked itself
with other things—notably the fact that he hadn’t made one
really intelligent remark to her during the whole of their talks. He had
listened; he had often made some “suitable” comment; he had
certainly never said anything stupid; but of wit, of originality, of anything
subtle or scintillating, there had been nothing. Miss Faulkner was
disappointed, but she knew it could not be helped. After all, she met
charming people far less often than clever ones, and how devastating for her
if Mr. Brown had chanced to be both! She turned out the light, deciding that
the really satisfactory conclusion would be for him to invite her to spend a
week in Paris with him; she would accept, and they would thus live happily
ever afterwards—without each other.

Unfortunately for this pleasant possibility, Mr. Brown had so far shown no
sign of desiring even friendship, much less amorous adventure. Miss Faulkner
admitted this, but without despair. She had, in her time, surmounted barriers
that had at first seemed just as forbidding; and she surmised, too, that, in
most men as in most women, love was largely a question of having the idea put
into their heads when they had nothing else to do. Besides, it was fun trying
to get what she wanted, particularly when it didn’t matter a great deal
if she were unsuccessful. It was even fun to try and imagine things about
him, though she gave up her vision of a high Genevan official and substituted
that of a retired bank manager whom his wife had left because she found him
too much of a bore.

And then, the very next morning, she made her great discovery.

She had received by the first post a further batch of correspondence
forwarded from England, and among its items was a monthly paper issued by
some society to which she belonged—one of those organisations for the
protection, abolition, or propagation of something or other. The paper was a
meagre product in its own particular class of journalism, badly printed and
on poor quality paper, but its centre page did contain a sufficiently
recognisable photograph of Mr. Brown. And underneath was the caption:
“Mr. Charles Gathergood, late British Agent at Cuava, Broken on the
Wheel of Capitalist Imperialism.”

Miss Faulkner knew, of course, all about Gathergood. She had followed the
whole business in the daily Press; she had even proposed in public a
resolution of protest against the shooting down of defenceless Cuavanese by
British sailors. Her sympathy with the Cuavanese was naturally intense, since
she had never seen them, and since all her respected sources of information
assured her that they were the persecuted victims of sadistic rubber-planters
in league with a cynical white bureaucracy. Gathergood, according to the
unanimous and almost automatic decision of left-wing authority, had stood up,
one solitary man against a system, to champion a stricken and exploited
subject-race. He had refused consent to Prussianised methods (only, of
course, one must not say “Prussianised” any more), and had in
consequence been put to the cruel farce of an enquiry at which the real
villains had sat in the judgment- seat and condemned him. Quite a vociferous
section of English opinion held these views, and for some time after the
issue of the report working-men hecklers at their opponents’ meetings
had been in the habit of shouting: “What erbaht Gathergood of
Kewarver?”—just as they might similarly ask about the Zinovieff
Letter, Amritsar, or any other disputed phenomenon.

Upon Miss Faulkner, therefore, the unmasking of that heroic name behind
the prosaic pseudonym came like a spark to dry tinder. She sat for a long
time in her wicker chair under the bedroom window, holding the revealing
photograph in her hand. Yes, she was sure it was he; the nose, mouth, and
forehead were unmistakable, and even the eyes and hair were as confirmatory
as could be expected from a newspaper print. And then, too, it fitted in with
his own queer vagueness and reticences, with his mention of malaria, with the
sombre look that she had noted in his eyes sometimes, with—yes, yes,
of course it did—even with the very thing that had caused her
misgiving. For how could he be expected to respond to stimulating
conversation if his mind were still clouded with the memory of undeserved
censure? And how could he feel in any mood for a display of mental agility
after such storms as had lately broken over his head? Besides, however clever
he might or mightn’t be, he was principally a man of action, a hero.
Normally Miss Faulkner was not very keen on heroes (she had always thought
there was something a little vulgar about winning the V.C.); but
Gathergood’s heroism was clearly different; he had championed the
oppressed, which was to say, the non-British; indeed, since the stand taken
by the conscientious objectors during the War, Miss Faulkner could not call
to mind anything more inspiring.

She came down to breakfast with eyes ablaze, and when, in fear lest he
were gone, she looked through the hotel doorway across the road, there he
was, taking his coffee and rolls as usual, but, oh, how much more to her
now—this Gathergood of Cuava, man of such magnificent sorrow, already
more than canonised in her heart.

She had to escort her party to Brienz that day, but before setting out she
scribbled a hasty note to her brother.

“I wonder if you would mind looking out and sending me back-numbers
of the ‘Record’ dealing with the Gathergood case—you know,
the man who refused to shoot the native rubber-workers in Cuava. I think Miss
Totham gave me some cuttings about it as well—they’re probably
in the cupboard under the gramophone. You might send them along with the
papers and also the report of the Singapore Enquiry which was held recently.
I daresay you can get it at the Stationery Office for a few shillings.
It’s a shame to bother you with all these things, but I know you
won’t mind. I’d tell you why I want them, but it’s rather a
long story and I must dash away to collect my people for a train that leaves
almost immediately. In great haste therefore,

“Your affectionate sister,

“FLORENCE.”

All the time she was piloting her party round the wood-carving shops at
Brienz, Miss Faulkner was exulting over her discovery. Now, more than ever,
she craved the friendship of the lonely, blue-eyed man at the
“Oberland”; but now her desire was tinged with the thrill of a
secret shared between them, with the pursuit of all her cherished ideals,
with—yes, with love. Indeed, for a moment there in the main street of
Brienz she became quite dazed with her new vision and could only stare
stupidly when she heard one of her party addressing her. “Yes, they are
rather sweet, aren’t they?” she managed to answer at last, and to
show a belated interest in her surroundings she picked up something
haphazardly from the wood-carver’s counter and pretended to examine it.
She put it hastily back, however, on perceiving it to be a musical-box
disguised as a toilet-roll.