Miss Hargreaves (25 page)

‘I don’t know, Henry. I don’t much believe in them. I tell you–’ A sudden idea came to me. ‘I tell you who
might
help.’

‘Who?’

‘Father Toule.’

‘What? That comic little R.C. with a face like an egg?’

‘I reckon he’d understand this sort of thing somehow. It’s–well, it’s a miracle, and Roman Catholics know more about miracles than most people.’

‘Why don’t you go to the Dean? He’s a kind old bird. He’d listen.’

‘Yes. And think I was mad. Father Toule wouldn’t think that.’

‘I don’t see why.’

‘He came into the shop one day, Henry; and bought an old book about some queer saint-chappie. Joseph, he’s called; Joseph of Cupertino. He used to fly.’

‘First time I’ve heard of an aviator-saint.’

‘Idiot. This was in the seventeenth century. Nothing to do with aeroplanes. He used to fly all over the church. The monks had a job to keep him down. It’s a fact, you needn’t laugh. At least–it is to the R.C.s. He hadn’t much brain, either. Like me in that way.’

‘Well, I don’t see what flying’s got to do with Connie.’

I shuddered. ‘It might,’ I said cautiously, ‘have more to do with her than you imagine.’

‘You’ve got something fresh up your sleeve about Connie,’ said Henry suspiciously. I was silent. I felt I didn’t dare tell him about the swan. It might not be true, after all. And, if I blabbed about it, it might yet come true. Which was the last thing I wanted, attracted as I was by the miraculous.

‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘I think you’d far better go to this doctor fellow. There’s nothing supernatural about it. Something’s just gone askew in your mind–that’s what it is.’

‘Thank you, Henry,’ I said bitterly. ‘And in your mind, too, I suppose.’

Henry ignored this. I could see that bath sticking in his throat again. He swallowed rapidly. ‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘he could prove you
had
known Miss Hargreaves years ago? That’d get you somewhere, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’s too damn prosaic an explanation,’ I objected. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘You don’t
want
it?’

‘No. I–’ I hesitated. I was burning to take him into my confidence about the swan. I couldn’t resist throwing out a hint.

‘I might have done something pretty big to-day,’ I said. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when I’m sure.’

‘You haven’t murdered her, have you?’

‘Not quite. Just a little metempsychosis.’

‘A little what-osis?’

‘Metempsyche.’

Henry stared at me.

‘I wonder if–’ I mused to myself, looking at a vase of montbretias on the table. I was suddenly tempted to try to turn them into a cotton-reel. Don’t know why. Just came into my head. Another peak.

‘Be a reel of cotton!’ I hissed, throwing a lot of invisible dust at them.

Nothing happened. The clock ticked on. I laughed weakly.

‘Only my little joke,’ I said feebly. ‘Only my little joke. So long, Henry.’

I left him. Through the window I could see him holding up the montbretias and looking at them. There was a rather scared expression on his face, I thought.

Things fly round a bit too quickly in Cornford. I believe if you sent a telegram to yourself you’d get it before you sent it.

‘Marjorie’s broken-hearted,’ said mother, the moment I got in.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ I said. ‘Hearts don’t break as easily as that.’

‘How
can
you be so unkind? Marjorie actually told Jim she was certain you were going to marry this wretched woman. Of course, I don’t believe anything so fantastic as that, but I do wish you would tell us the
truth
, Norman.’

‘Truth!’ I laughed cynically.

‘First you say one thing, then you say another. What
are
we to believe?’

‘I’ll tell you something about truth,’ I said bitterly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They say Truth lies at the bottom of a well. I’ve got drowned in it. That’s what I mean.’

‘Norman, I really believe you are ill.’

The way my mother said that word ‘ill’. I wish you could have heard it. ‘You can’t go on like this,’ she continued. ‘You’ve dropped your work completely; you won’t settle down to a thing. And it’s all because of this Miss Hargreaves. I–’

I suddenly lost my temper.

‘Damn Miss Hargreaves!’ I cried. ‘Blast Miss Hargreaves! To hell with–’ I caught back my words, appalled at what I had said. Who knew what might not happen to her now?

‘I’m sorry I swore,’ I said. ‘Is father upstairs?’

‘Father is in his room, messing about as usual.’ Mother turned rather coldly away from me, obviously offended. I went upstairs. Father calmed me. He always does. He’s never yet told me I’m a liar. He doesn’t necessarily believe what you tell him, but at any rate he never voices his disbelief.

I had to tell him all about the swan; it was intolerable to keep it to myself any longer.

‘I know it’s impossible,’ I said. ‘But still–’

‘H’m.’ He was very slowly tapping out letters on an old Oliver typewriter. ‘Swans are funny creatures. I wouldn’t trust a swan with a five-pound note. No, I wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, but the point about this swan–’ I began. Then I stopped. What was the use of talking about it? Somehow I had simply got to convince myself that the whole thing was pure coincidence. A good many things that seem surprising
are
coincidental. I dare say my being alive and writing this book is a coincidence, really, if one could only get to the bottom of it all. What a damn mystery life is!

‘Give me a drop of whisky, will you, father?’ I asked.

‘Go ahead, my boy. You’ll find the siphon on the top of the butterfly cabinet. You might put back those oak-eggars, will you?’

I drank and fell back into a chair; I felt like drinking myself silly. Father lit a cigarette and poured himself a drink.

‘Do you think I’m batty, father?’ I said.

‘Battiness,’ he remarked, ‘is far more common than one supposes.’

‘Nothing seems real to me to-day.’

‘Reality isn’t what it’s thought to be,’ he said, blowing out great clouds of smoke, then blowing them away from himself to me. ‘No. Reality is–well–there’s that fellow who talks on the wireless–who is it? Lord Elton, or is it Eddystone? No! Edison, that’s the fellow. We’re here today gone to-morrow and some say to-morrow never comes, so perhaps we don’t go. Who knows?’

‘Do you believe in psychology, father?’

‘How do you
know
you’re real? You might not be here at all. There’s only one thing I’m certain of, my boy; and that is–I’m not certain of anything. You can’t prove a damn thing. Two and two make four; so they
say
. But who the hell knows what two is?’

I helped myself to some more whisky. For several minutes we were silent. It was queer how I felt that my father had the key to the whole mystery of Miss Hargreaves, if only he could find the right lock to put it into. But you never could pin father down to anything definite; if you could, he wouldn’t be father.

‘Music now,’ he said presently. He rose, stubbed out his cigarette in an old bowler hat he uses as an ash-tray, and found his violin.

‘I can’t play,’ I said. ‘I’ve got an addled mind.’

‘Well, you can listen to me, then. Music’s the only thing in this world that isn’t addled.’

He stood by the open window and started to play one of his own tunes. I wish I could write it down for you, but it would lose something if I tried to tape it out to minims and quavers and so on. It was, as usual, the long
cantabile
type of melody that always seemed to grow as naturally as speech from him. More naturally. I knew that when he started he hadn’t the slightest idea what he was going to play. He gave the violin a life of its own; never interfered with it. The violin had a song to sing; father was merely there to help it.

‘There,’ he said, laying down his fiddle. I was moved and I said nothing. ‘I,’ continued father, ‘and this gut and carved wood–animal and vegetable–together we combine to produce something that’s never been in the world before. Listen.’

I listened. ‘Can’t hear anything,’ I said.

‘That’s the point,’ he said. ‘Neither can I. But if you had sharp enough ears, you’d be able to hear that tune going on somewhere. You don’t suppose it’s dead, do you?’

‘What’re you getting at, father?’ I sat up, keenly interested.

‘An idea of mine,’ he said. ‘Just an idea of mine. About sound. Go and strike a great fat
arpeggio
chord of D flat on the piano, boy.’

I went to the piano.

‘Hold the loud pedal down,’ he said. ‘Strike bass D flat–then A flat a fifth higher–then tenor F–and so on right up the piano to the highest F. Then sit still with your foot down on the loud pedal. Listen. You’ll understand something.’

I did as he commanded, very slowly and powerfully striking the notes, then sitting silently, the loud pedal down, and listening. Slowly, slowly, the great chord trembled away into space. For nearly a minute we could hear it. It was hard to break the silence afterwards a silence that was no longer a silence and never, never could be again.

‘My God!’ I said.

‘Hush!’ whispered father. He stood at the window, looking out. ‘Still there,’ he murmured. ‘Never dies, you know. Never dies. Going on, all round the world, my boy. You can’t cancel it. That’s my idea. You and your Miss Holgrave–that chord, my tune. Mysteries, boy; all mysteries. Don’t be surprised at anything. When you understand what that chord does, you’ll be near to understanding everything.’

Mother came in. It’s always the same. Whenever father and I get talking, mother comes in. And, of course, she doesn’t
know
; she doesn’t understand the sort of things father and I talk about. Not that we understand them ourselves, as a matter of fact.

‘Have you heard the news?’ mother asked. You could tell she was bursting with something important; I knew it was Hargreaves news.

‘Jim’s just met Mr Carver, the house-agent who was handling Lessways. Miss Hargreaves has bought the property.’

Somehow, it didn’t surprise me. Vaguely I knew that I must be responsible, though I didn’t know exactly why.

About half-past ten, feeling terribly uneasy, I went round to Canticle Alley again.

Mrs Beedle shook her head mournfully.

‘No. She ain’t come back. I were thinking about these ’ere S O S’s, sir. They’ll be dragging the river, mark my words. Willy-nilly, she say to me, and those was her very words . . .’