James Hilton: Collected Novels (77 page)

We had had no chance for private conversation on our way to the meeting, for the secretary of the company had driven with us; and afterwards there was a directors’ hotel lunch that did not disperse until almost three o’clock. As I went to retrieve our hats at the cloak room I overheard comments on how Rainier had been in grand form, looking so much better; wonderful year it had been; wonderful the way he’d pulled the Anglo-American out of its earlier doldrums—remember when the shares were down to five bob?—nice packet anyone could have made who’d helped himself in those days—well, maybe Rainier did, why not?—after all, he’d had faith in himself, faith in the business, faith in the country—that’s what was wanted, pity more people didn’t have it.

Later, as we were driving away, I repeated the compliments to Rainier, thinking they might please him. He shook his head somberly. “Don’t call it faith. I haven’t had
faith
in anything for years. That artist fellow, Kitty’s young man, told me that when he was drunk—and he was right. Faith is something deeper, more passionate, less derisive, more tranquil than anything I’ve ever felt in board rooms and offices—that’s why peace won’t come to me now. … God, I’m tired.”

“Why don’t you go home and rest?”

He stared at me ironically. “So simple, isn’t it? Just go home and rest. Like a child. … Or like an old man. The trouble is, I’m neither. Or else both.” He suddenly patted my arm. “Sorry—don’t take any notice of my bad temper.”

“I don’t think you’re bad-tempered.”

“By the way,” he said smiling, “I’ve just thought of something—it’s a queer coincidence, don’t you think?—two of my best friends I first met quite accidentally on trains … Blampied and yourself. …”

“I’m pleased you should class me with him.”

“Why not? He talked to me—you listen to me—even when I want to talk all night. That’s another thing I ought to apologize for—”

“Not at all—in fact if it helps you now to go on talking—to continue the recollections—”

“I don’t think I’ve much more to say, unless there’s anything you’d particularly like to know?”

There were many things’ I wanted to know, but for the present I felt I could only mention one of them. “Those articles you wrote, some of which were published—”

“Yes?”

“What papers did they appear in?”

“The
Northern Evening Post
took two or three—the worst. The others—don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they fell in the gutter when the car hit me.”

“You were carrying them—
then?”

“Yes,
I was on my way to see the editor.”

“A pity you hadn’t taken copies.”

“It was before the days I bothered about carbon paper. You see, I never behaved like a full-dress author. I used Blampied’s typewriter because he had one, but I didn’t card-index anything or call the room where I worked a study or self-consciously burn any midnight oil. Matter of fact, I was in bed by ten on most nights, and I wrote if and when I felt like it. I never thought of the word ‘inspiration’ as having anything to do with me—it was a continual vision of life that mattered more than words in print, but if I did get into print I had more ambition to be alive for half a day in a local paper than to be embalmed forever between covers on a library shelf.”

“All the same, though, those articles might have been collected in book form.”

“Blampied thought of that, and Paula and I once made a choice of what we thought were the best—but I wasn’t very keen on the idea, and it certainly wasn’t likely any publisher would have been either. I remember it chiefly because the evening we were choosing them Blampied came in and found us huddled together on the floor with the typed pages surrounding us. He asked, ‘What are you two planning—the book or your future?’—and Paula laughed and answered ‘Both.’ ”

We had entered Palace Yard, passing the saluting policeman and a swarm of newsboys carrying posters about Hitler. As we left the car a few seconds later Rainier added: “It’s odd to reflect, isn’t it, that at that very moment a few hundred miles away a man whom we had never heard of was also planning a book—and our future.”

We crossed the pavement and entered the Gothic doorway; the House, as always, seemed restful, almost soporific, on a summer afternoon.

“And you’ve never written anything like those articles since?” I queried, after a pause.

“I’ve been too busy, Sir Hawk, as the lady called you, and possibly also my prose style isn’t what it used to be. I did write one book, though—or perhaps Sherlock would have called it a monograph—the title was
Constructive Monetary Policy and an International Cartel
—I hope you’ve never heard of it.”

I said I had not only heard of it but read it.

“Then I hope you didn’t buy it when it first came out, because I came across it the other day on a barrow in the Farringdon Road, marked ‘Choice’ and going for fourpence.”

I smiled, recognizing the familiar self-ridicule by which he worked himself out of his moods. We walked on through cool corridors to the Terrace and found a table. As nearly always, a breeze blew over the parapet, bringing tangs of the sea and of wharves, a London mixture that added the right flavor to tea and buttered toast and the special edition of the
Evening Standard.
More bother about Danzig; Hitler had made another speech. Some Members came along, stopped at our table to exchange a few words of greeting; one of them, seeing the headlines, exclaimed: “Why don’t they let him have it, then maybe well all get some peace?”—but another retorted indignantly: “My dear fellow, we
can’t
let him have any more, that’s just the point, we’ve
got
to make a stand—eh, Rainier?” Rainier said: “We’ve got to have peace and we’ve got to make a stand—that’s exactly the policy of the government.” They passed on, uncertain whether he had been serious or cynical (and that uncertainty, now I come to think of it, was part of the reason why he hadn’t climbed the higher rungs of the Parliamentary ladder).

He looked so suddenly exhausted after they had gone that I asked if he had been able to sleep at all during the previous day and night.

“Not much. A few hours yesterday morning after you left. The rest of the day I devoted to an investigation.”

“Oh?”

“I went to Vale Street to look for Blampied’s old house. It’s disappeared—been pulled down to make room for one of those huge municipal housing schemes. All that part of London seems to be changed—and it’s certainly no loss, except in memories. I couldn’t even find anybody who
remembered
Blampied.”

“That’s not very surprising.”

“Why not?” He stared at me sharply, then added: “D’you mean you don’t believe he ever existed?”

“Oh, he existed all right. But he died such a long time ago.”

“When?”

“In 1920.”

“Good God! Within a year—of—of my—leaving—like that.”

“Not only within a year. Within a month.
January
1920.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I also spent part of yesterday investigating. I searched the obituaries in newspaper files and found this.” I handed him a sheet of paper on which I had copied out the following from the
Daily Gazette
of January 17, 1920:—

We regret to announce the death at the age of seventy-four of the Reverend John Sylvester Blampied, for many years Rector of St. Clement’s Church, Vale Street, North London. Pneumonia following a chill ended a career that had often attracted public attention—particularly in connection with the preservation of ancient footpaths, a cause of which Mr. Blampied had been a valiant if sometimes tempestuous champion. His death took place in Liverpool, and funeral services will be held at St. Clement’s on Friday.

Rainier stared at the paragraph long enough to read it several times, then handed it back. His face was very pale.
“Liverpool?
What was he doing there?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“I—I think I can guess. He’d gone to look for me.”

“We don’t
know
that.”

“But isn’t it probable?”

“It’s—it’s possible. But you couldn’t help it. You couldn’t help finding out who you were.”

“I can’t help comparing what I found with what I lost!”

“You didn’t lose permanently. You’ve got it all back now.”

“But too late.” He waved his arm with sudden comprehensive emphasis.
“Isn’t
it too late? I’m down to ask a question in the House shortly, but not
that
question, yet it’s the only one worth asking or answering … isn’t
everything
too late? I should have stayed in that London attic. There were things to do in those days if one had vision to do them but now there’s neither time nor vision, but only this whiff of putrefying too-lateness. It was almost too late even then, except that by a sort of miracle there came a gap in long-gathering clouds—an incredibly last chance—a golden shaft along which England might have climbed back to glory.”

“Less lyrically, you mean you’d like to set the clock back?”

“Yes, set it back, and set it right, and then wind it up, because it’s been running down ever since Englishmen were more interested in the price of things on the market than what they could grow in their own gardens.”

“I see. A back-to-the-land movement?”

“Back anywhere away from me unrealness of counting able-bodied men as a national burden just because they’re listed as unemployed, and figures in bank ledgers as assets just because they’re supposed to represent riches. Back anywhere from the mood in which poor men beg me for jobs in Rainier factories and rich men for tips about Rainier shares.”

“All the same, though—and you’ve often said it yourself—the Rainier firm gives steady employment to thousands—”

“I know, I know. But I know too that the way that made Rainiers rich was the opposite of the way to make England strong.”

“Yet if war comes, won’t the riches of Rainier have been of some benefit? After all, the new steelworks you were able to build two years ago, and the mass-production motor plant—”

“True—and what a desolate irony! But only
half
true, because strength is only half in tanks and steel. The other half is faith, wisdom—”

A House servant approached and said something in his ear; he answered, consulting his watch: “Oh yes. I’ll come at once.” Then he added to me: “It’s time for that question.”

We left the table and walked through the Smoke Room to the Lobby; then we separated, he to enter the Chamber, I to watch and listen from the Strangers’ Gallery.

Again, as earlier at the Cement meeting, I was in no mood for correct secretarial concentration; from where I sat the main thing that impressed me was his strained pallor on rising to speak; in the green-yellow glow that came on as dusk fell his face took on a curious transparency, as if some secret hidden self were flooding outwards and upwards. But that, I knew, was a mere trick of artificial light; the House of Commons illumination flatters in such a way, often gilding with spirituality a scene which is not, in itself, very remarkable—a few Members going through the formality which would later entitle them to boast of having “raised the matter in the House,” than which, except for writing letters to
The Times,
fortunate generations of Englishmen were never called upon to do more. That afternoon the benches were thinly populated, nothing important was expected, and I find from newspaper reports that the following took place:—

Mr. Charles Rainier (Conservative: West Lythamshire) asked whether a consignment of trade catalogues dispatched by a business firm in his constituency had been confiscated by the port authorities at Balos Blanca, and whether this was not contrary to Section 19 of the recent Trade Convention signed at Amazillo.

The Right Honorable Sir George Smith-Jordan (Conservative: Houghley), replying for the Government, said he had been informed by His Majesty’s Consul at Balos Blanca that the reported confiscation had been only partial and temporary, affecting a certain section of the catalogues about which there appeared to have been some linguistic misunderstanding, and that the greater part of the consignment had since been delivered to the addressees. As to whether the action of the port authorities had or had not been an infringement of any clause of the Amazillo Trade Convention, he was not in a position to say until further information had been received.

Mr. Jack Wells (Labour: Mawlington) asked whether, having regard to the general unsatisfactoriness of the incident, His Majesty’s Government would consider the omission of Balos Blanca from the scheduled list of ports of call during the proposed Good-Will Tour of the British Trade Delegation in 1940.

The Right Honorable Sir George Smith-Jordan: No, sir.

Immediately after that, Rainier picked up his papers and walked out, leaving the Mother of Parliaments to struggle along with barely more than a quorum till after the dinner hour. Meanwhile I left the Gallery, in which a small crowd of provincial and foreign visitors had been defiantly concealing their disappointment at the proceedings below, and met him in the Lobby; he was gossiping with strangers, but behind the façade of casualness I saw how haggard he looked, his face restlessly twitching in and out of smiles. Seeing me approach he made a sign for me to wait while he detached himself from the crowd—they were constituents, he explained later, and constituents had to be humored, especially when one’s majority had been only twelve last time. “They’re so proud because they heard me ask about that catalogue business—they have a touching belief that a question in Parliament pulls invisible wires, sets invisible forces in motion, works invisible miracles all over the world.”

Passing through the Smoke Room again on the way to the Terrace we saw the name “McAlister” on the notice board that announced current speakers; Rainier smiled and said that was fine—McAlister always gave one a chance to stroll for half an hour with the certainty of not missing anything. “By the way, I’m dining at the Historians’ Club’ so I don’t think I’ll need you for the rest of the evening.”

“Are you down to speak?”

“I’m not on the program but I daresay I’ll be asked.”

“You don’t have to go if you’d rather not. I can make up some excuse.”