Human Traces (4 page)

Brigstocke!" she said irrupting into the smoky cavern. "What's the matter, Miss Sonia?" Sonia sat at the table and put her hand to her head. "Nothing." She laughed and sat up. "Nothing's the matter. It's just rather... I wanted to escape. I keep wanting to giggle. I feel someone's going to make a fool of themselves, and it might be me." "What's he like then?" said Miss Brigstocke. "Who?" May giggled. "The young man." "I don't know what you mean, Miss Brigstocke. I've come to tell you that you may send through the dessert." "Very well, Miss." "He's very..." Sonia put her hand to her mouth. "Curly." May snorted. "And he's going to move to London, and live in Mayfair." "London," said Miss Brigstocke sepulchrally, as though it were Gomorrah. "Well, well, well. Now then, May, get those jellies from the larder and put the cloth on the tray. Go on." Sonia stood up. "I suppose I'd better go back. They liked the mutton, Miss Brigstocke." "Good. And the fish? Did Mrs. Midwinter like the fish?" Sonia stopped in the doorway and looked back, grave in her plum-coloured dress. "I was not going to mention the fish, Miss Brigstocke." The flow of conversation at the dining table had divided. Sonia resumed her seat and tried to decide whether she should join her father and Mrs. Prendergast, who were talking about the breeding of horses, or save Lucy from Mr. Prendergast s enquiries about her pregnancy. The door of the room rattled loudly and swung open to reveal Thomas Midwinter, covered in mud and snow, clutching his left arm in his right, pale, with grey lips and a thin line of blood running down his cheek. He had been in a fight with some boys from the village and lost track of time; he thought he might have broken his arm. "For heaven's sake go and get washed," said Mrs. Midwinter. "You can come and join us when you've changed. Fisher, see if Miss Brigstocke can keep something hot for him." "I'm sorry about that," said Mr. Midwinter as the door closed. "My younger son. He lives in a world of his own, I'm afraid." He spoke without enthusiasm. There was a murmur of sympathy. "But never mind about him. Where were we?" It was quite dark by the time Thomas came downstairs and joined the rest of the party in the dining room, where the light from the small fire had been augmented by that of two pewter candelabra that Fisher had set uncertainly on the table. Thomas had dressed himself properly, in a jacket, white necktie and waistcoat, but he looked pale, Sonia noticed, and he used only one hand to eat the plate of mutton that was brought to him. Thomas had untidy chestnut hair, and eyes that were the opposite of Richard Prendergast's: brown, steady and liable to remain fixed for a long time on a single person as though he was making an examination, dispassionate and not necessarily kind. Suddenly, his body might be galvanised by a thought, a spasm of laughter or by the physical turbulence of being sixteen years old, and he would speak fast, fluently, in his recently acquired baritone voice. Then his eyes flashed, no longer still, but often filled with affection, a little for his parents and elder brother, but mostly towards Sonia, to whom his gaze seemed often to return. When the meal was finally done, Mrs. Midwinter took the women upstairs to her bedroom, while her husband circulated some port among the men. "In due course," said Mr. Midwinter, "Edgar will take over my business, just as he will inherit the house. After he completed his studies, I sent him away to Canada to learn about grain. He's going to start working for me next year." Mr. Midwinter was the third generation to manage the company of Chas Midwinter & Sons, grain merchants, but he felt sure that the previous two had never had to work so hard. Harvest, yields, transport, markets... Nothing was predictable except the fierceness of the competition and the narrowness of his own margins of profit. "I see," said Mr. Prendergast. "And what about you, young man?" He turned to Thomas. "I suppose it's the church or the army for you, is it?" He laughed richly. "As a matter of fact, he's very keen on the Bible, aren't you?" "I like the stories, Father," said Thomas. "I like the tales of people lost in the wilderness. But I don't think that makes me a likely priest." "But it's still the Bible, isn't it? You spend hours with your nose in it." "They are stories, like Homer. I love Homer, too. Or Shakespeare's plays." "Oh, dear. Don't start on the theatre," said Mr. Midwinter. "Our guests don't want to hear about all that. Hamlet's ghost and three witches and heaven knows what." "It's Hamlet's father's ghost, in fact, who ' "He pesters me all the time to let him go to London, to Drury Lane or some such place." Richard Prendergast laughed. "I suppose the young fellow wants to meet all the pretty actresses." "It's really only Shakespeare I like," said Thomas. "He tells you things that he's discovered, like a great inventor." "And there were we," said Richard, 'thinking the play was an evening's entertainment!" Thomas's eyes grew narrow, but he said nothing. "I suppose we shall have to send him to the university," said Mr. Midwinter, 'like his brother." "Oh yes?" Mr. Prendergast seemed taken aback. "Yes, indeed," repeated Mr. Midwinter, as though worried that his guest had not quite understood. "The University at Cambridge is the Midwinter tradition now." Prendergast rallied politely. "I see. So you will be joining the scholars in their caps and gowns, will you? And what will be your subject?" "Well, sir," said Thomas. "I suppose it depends on whether my father will pay for me to go there." "True enough," said Mr. Midwinter. "Fiendish expensive it is." Thomas pushed his plate away, still nursing his left arm. He looked through the French doors over the darkened terrace at the side of the house. Beyond it, at the end of the crazy paving, above the stone gate posts, he could see a handful of low stars. "If I could choose anything at all to study' he said, still looking into the clear winter sky, "I suppose it would be Shakespeare and some of the other English poets." The others laughed again. "You are a buffoon' Thomas said Edgar. "As though the fellows of the College would get together and teach you how to watch a play!" Mr. Prendergast was purple with mirth. "Or read poetry to you!" Mr. Midwinter was also smiling, though with plain embarrassment. "He's just pulling our leg, aren't you, Thomas? It's always been his way' "Really," said Thomas. "They teach us grammar at school, how to read and write. Then they teach us to translate Homer and Euripides. Why should they not teach the depths of literature?" "For heaven's sake," said Edgar, 'you can't become a Bachelor of Arts in reading novels!" "I meant poetry. Shakespeare drew a new map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Why is one considered science and the other fit only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and Drury Lane?" "That's enough," said Mr. Midwinter, rising from the table. "Edgar, go and join the ladies in the morning room. Thomas, you go and make yourself useful. Prendergast, you come with me if you please, sir, and smoke a pipe in my study' There, the two men stood on either side of the fireplace, approximately equal in height, dressed in similar clothes of good but not ostentatious quality, each wary, full of family pride, but willing, all other things being equal, to proceed. "I like your house, Midwinter. And your family. Mrs. Midwinter, a very gracious lady if I may say so." "Thank you." Mr. Midwinter inclined his head. "Mrs. Prendergast likewise. Do you have other children?" "Another boy at home. But no girls. No dowries to find." "Indeed... Indeed not." There was an awkwardness. "And your young Thomas. He's a character, isn't he?" "Oh, him?" Mr. Midwinter waved a hand. "He'll settle down. He'll study law like his elder brother in the end, I expect. He shall have to find a profession because I expect to have only one heir to my business and my house." "He looks a decent lad, your Edgar." "Yes. I couldn't ask for better." Mr. Midwinter took a half step forward, as though he had recovered from the thought of dowries and was now prepared to move cautiously on to the offensive. "This sugar business," he said. "Is that likely to flourish?" "Oh yes." Mr. Prendergast stuck his pipe into his mouth and pulled at his waistcoat with both hands. "I'll make sure the boy's well set up there. I know a few people in Cheapside who ' "What? Usurers?" "No, no, no," laughed Prendergast. "Useful folk for the boy to know. People who can put business his way' "Will he have to travel? He can't rely on people in coffee houses to do his work for him. And then he'd be away from... From home." "We'll not let him come to any harm." "Why does he not follow you into the family business? Would that not be more secure for him and his wife?" Prendergast set down his pipe on the mantelpiece. "Let us talk about this straight," he said. "I have had a good look at your girl and I like what I have seen." "She is an accomplished child. She ' "I am not saying my Richard could not do better. But I am saying he could do worse." Mr. Midwinter made as if to speak, then held back. It was a more delicate business than he had expected because he had no certain idea of how attractive Sonia might appear to a young man. Her figure was slender and womanly, he supposed; her manner was considerate yet lively: but was she beautiful? Did a young stranger see something to enchant him, or merely, as he himself did, the ghosts of the various stages of childhood and adolescence layered up one upon another, almost visible beneath her excitable skin? He did not enjoy hearing his daughter discussed by this man as he presumably talked about a bolt of cloth to some Lancashire supplier, but he was obliged to listen; if Prendergast let slip that he or his son considered her attractive, then he might be able to offer a smaller dowry. Thomas Midwinter went up to his bedroom and took up the book he was reading, Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott. He had chosen it from the library because of a single line of Scott's poetry: "O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west'. The last word suggested mists and freshness and romance odd, he thought, when really the west was where the sun went down and the day ended. The word 'young' made Lochinvar easy for Thomas to identify with (he felt sorry for old people) yet also worryingly vulnerable; and some terrible, precarious hope was in that sighing "O'. What Thomas loved most about the line, however, was the word 'is'. In his grammar class the master had explained that this was an archaism, yet the two common letters sent shivers of delight through him. Quentin Durward, on the other hand, was drudgery. At that moment, Louis XI was being reconciled, slowly, with Charles the Bold at Peronne, while Quentin's affairs had been left to drift. Thomas settled on the bed and pulled the candle closer to him. He was fairly certain that he had broken his left arm, but did not wish to intrude on the business of the day. After a while he closed his eyes, folded the book on his chest and gave in to the ache of his limbs. Often at such moments he heard his voice. It was that of a narcoleptic man who had spoken to him regularly since childhood. It was not like hearing his own thoughts, which invariably came in fully formed sentences as though uttered by himself, silently into his mind's ear (the sound of thoughts was similar to the sound of reading, when, however rapidly his eye skimmed the lines, the words did form and resonate, albeit inaudibly). His voice, by contrast, could be heard, like Edgar's voice or Sonia's; it was outside him, not produced by the workings of his own brain but by some other being. Generally, it soothed him. It offered comments of an indifferent, sometimes inconsequential nature on what he was doing or thinking or proposing. It did not try to interfere with his life and he was not frightened of it. The voice was always slow and dream-weighted, as though its owner had drained off a bottle of laudanum before speaking. He heard it less and less often these days, but it had been for so long such an intimate part of his experience of living that he had never thought to question it; nor had he ever mentioned it to anyone. There was no voice in the dark December afternoon, no sound at all in Thomas's bedroom or from outside, where the garden and the village lay beneath the muffling weight of snow. It was dark, dead winter, Saint Lucy's day, and the sequence of Thomas's thought broke up into single images, in whose hypnotic light he faded into sleep. There was a knocking at the door. It rose through his dream, where it was briefly incorporated as a hammer on an anvil, then awoke him. He stood up and crossed the floor. "Wake Duncan with thy knocking," he thought, "I would thou couldst... Sonia!" "Can I come in?" "Yes. What's going on?" "They have been in the study for almost two hours." "And still no puff of smoke?" "Oh there's plenty of smoke. It is like a London fog." "You know what I mean. Come and sit on the bed." "I had to show Mrs. Prendergast round the house and then take her outside to look at the grounds. I saw that awful man Fisher swigging from a bottle in the kitchen garden. Luckily it was almost dark by then so I don't think she saw. Are you all right, Thomas? You look pale." "It's my arm. I think it's broken." "Then we must take you to a doctor at once. Or I'll send... I'll send..." "Well, whom will you send? There's no one to send any more, is there? Jenkins, I suppose. But listen, Sonia, it's all right. I'll get Edgar to take me when they've gone. I don't want to distract them from their business." Thomas put his good hand in his sister's lap, where her own fingers were clasped together. "So," he said. "What do you think of him?" "I do not love him." "Really, Sonia. No one could expect that, not after two hours. Do you think you could marry him?" Sonia looked towards the door. "I think you should marry someone you love." "That is a very modern idea, I think. A very English idea. No one on the Continent of Europe would consider marrying for anything but social position." "I know," said Sonia. "But I am an English girl' Thomas and I don't live on the Continent of Europe." Thomas was silent for a moment. Then he said, "His hair is very ' "I know! But he's losing it at quite a rate. Soon there won't be any left." "Yes. The silver lining. I like your dress, by the way. You look beautiful." Sonia raised her eyes to her brother's face doubtfully. "The Queen of Sheba?" she said. "More lovely, much more." She pulled some thread from the cover on the bed. "It's easy for you," she said, 'because you can have any profession you like. You can live where you want, you can marry the girl of your choice." "Good Lord! If she'd have me. Anyway, I don't know what profession I should follow. They all laugh when I say I'm