The Complete Stories (37 page)

  "Joke? Jim, you shame me before my friends. But never fear. I have found a rich backer; if we aren't having this with you, you must have one with us."

  The barman poured himself out something from a bottle which he kept for the purpose on a shelf below the bar, and said, "First today," as we toasted one another. Atwater said, "It's one of the mysteries of the club what Jim keeps in that bottle of his." I knew; it was what every barman kept, cold tea, but I thought it would spoil Atwater's treat if I told him.

  Jim's "special" was strong and agreeable.

  "Is it all right for me to order a round?" I asked.

  "It's more than all right. It's perfect."

  Jim shook up another cocktail and refilled his own glass.

  "D'you remember the time I drank twelve of your specials before dinner with Mr. Appleby?"

  "I do, sir."

  "A tiny bit spifflicated that night, eh, Jim?"

  "A tiny bit, sir."

  We had further rounds; Jim took cash for the drinks; three shillings a time. After the first round, when Atwater broke into his pound note, I paid. Every other time he said, "Chalk it up to the national debt," or some similar reference to the fiction of our loan. Soon Jim and Atwater were deep in reminiscence of Atwater's past.

  After a time I found my thoughts wandering and went to telephone to Victoria Square. Roger answered. "It seems things are coming more or less normally," he said.

  "How is she?"

  "I haven't been in. The doctor's here now, in a white coat like an umpire. He keeps saying I'm not to worry."

  "But is she in danger?"

  "Of course she is, it's a dangerous business."

  "But I mean, more than most people?"

  "Yes. No. I don't know. They said everything was quite normal whatever that means."

  "I suppose it means she's not in more danger than most people."

  "I suppose so."

  "Does it bore you my ringing up to ask?"

  "No, not really. Where are you?"

  "At a club called the Wimpole."

  "Never heard of it."

  "No. I'll tell you about it later. Very interesting."

  "Good. Do tell me later."

  I returned to the bar. "I thought our old comrade had passed out on us," said Atwater. "Been sick?"

  "Good heavens, no."

  "You look a terrible colour, doesn't he, Jim? Perhaps a special is what he needs. I was sick that night old Grainger sold his Bentley, sick as a dog." ...

  When I had spent about thirty shillings Jim began to tire of his cold tea. "Why don't you gentlemen sit down at a table and let me order you a nice grill?" he asked.

  "All in good time, Jim, all in good time. Mr. Plant here would like one of your specials first just to give him an appetite, and I think rather than see an old pal drink alone, I'll join him."

  Later, when we were very drunk, steaks appeared which neither of us remembered ordering. We ate them at the bar with, at Jim's advice, great quantities of Worcester sauce. Our conversation, I think, was mainly about Appleby and the need of finding him. We rang up one or two people of that name, whom we found in the telephone book, but they disclaimed all knowledge of Jesuit treasure.

  It must have been four o'clock in the afternoon when we left the Wimpole. Atwater was more drunk than I. Next day I remembered most of our conversation verbatim. In the mews I asked him: "Where are you living?"

  "Digs. Awful hole. But it's all right now I've got money—I can sleep on the embankment. Police won't let you sleep on the embankment unless you've got money. Vagrancy. One law for the rich, one for the poor. Iniquitous system."

  "Why don't you come and live with me. I've got a house in the country, plenty of room. Stay as long as you like. Die there."

  "Thanks, I will. Must go to the embankment first and pack."

  And we separated, for the time, he sauntering unsteadily along Wimpole Street, past the rows of brass plates, I driving in a taxi to my rooms in Ebury Street where I undressed, folded my clothes and went quietly to bed. I awoke, in the dark, hours later, in confusion as to where I was and how I had got there.

  The telephone was ringing next door in my sitting room. It was Roger. He said that Lucy had had a son two hours ago; he had been ringing up relatives ever since; she was perfectly well; the first thing she had asked for when she came round from the chloroform was a cigarette. "I feel like going out and getting drunk," said Roger. "Don't you?"

  "No," I said. "No, I'm afraid not," and returned to bed.

  IV

  When I got drunk I could sleep it off and wake in tolerable health; Roger could not; in the past we had often discussed this alcoholic insomnia of his and found no remedy for it except temperance; after telephoning to me he had gone out with Basil; he looked a wreck next morning.

  "It's extraordinary," he said. "I've got absolutely no feeling about this baby at all. I kept telling myself all these last months that when I actually saw it, all manner of deep-rooted, atavistic emotions would come surging up. I was all set for a deep spiritual experience. They brought the thing in and showed it to me, I looked at it and waited—and nothing at all happened. It was just like the first time one takes hashish—or being ‘confirmed' at school."

  "I knew a man who had five children," I said. "He felt just as you do until the fifth. Then he was suddenly overcome with love; he bought a thermometer and kept taking its temperature when the nurse was out of the room. I daresay it's a habit, like hashish."

  "I don't feel as if I had anything to do with it. It's as though they showed me Lucy's appendix or a tooth they'd pulled out of her."

  "What's it like? I mean, it isn't a freak or anything?"

  "No, I've been into that; two arms, two legs, one head, white—just a baby. Of course, you can't tell for some time if it's sane or not. I believe the first sign is that it can't take hold of things with its hands. Did you know that Lucy's grandmother was shut up?"

  "I had no idea."

  "Yes. Lucy never saw her, of course. It's why she's anxious about Julia."

  "Is she anxious about Julia?"

  "Who wouldn't be?"

  "How soon can you tell if they're blind?"

  "Not for weeks, I believe. I asked Sister Kemp. She said, ‘The very idea,' and whisked the baby off as if I wanted to injure it, poor little brute. D'you know what Lucy calls Sister Kemp now?—Kempy."

  "It's not possible."

  It was true. I went in to see her for five minutes and twice during that time she said "Kempy." When we were alone for a minute I asked her why. "She asked me to," said Lucy, "and she's really very sweet."

  "Sweet?"

  "She was absolutely sweet to me yesterday."

  I had brought some flowers, but the room was full of them. Lucy lay in bed; slack and smiling. I sat down by her and held her hand. "Everyone's been so sweet," she said. "Have you seen my baby?"

  "No."

  "He's in the dressing room. Ask Kempy to show you."

  "Are you pleased with him?"

  "I love him. I do really. I never thought I should. He's such a person."

  This was incomprehensible.

  "You haven't gone bald," I said.

  "No, but my hair's terrible. What did you do yesterday?"

  "I got drunk."

  "So did poor Roger. Were you with him?"

  "No," I said, "it was really very amusing." I began to tell her about Atwater, but she was not listening.

  Then Sister Kemp came in with more flowers—from Mr. Benwell.

  "How sweet he is," said Lucy.

  This was past bearing—first Sister Kemp, now Mr. Benwell. I felt stifled in this pastry-cook's atmosphere. "I've come to say good-bye," I said. "I'm going back to the country to see about my house."

  "I'm so glad. It's lovely for you. I'm coming to see it as soon as I'm better."

  She did not want me, I thought; Humboldt's Gibbon and I had done our part. "You'll be my first guest," I said.

  "Yes. Quite soon."

  Sister Kemp went with me to the landing.

  "Now," she said, "come and see something very precious."

  There was a cradle in Roger's dressing room, made of white stuff and ribbons, and a baby in it.

  "Isn't he a fine big man?"

  "Magnificent," I said, "and very sweet ... Kempy."

  CHARLES RYDER'S SCHOOLDAYS

  I

  There was a scent of dust in the air; a thin vestige surviving in the twilight from the golden clouds with which before chapel the House Room fags had filled the evening sunshine. Light was failing. Beyond the trefoils and branched mullions of the windows the towering autumnal leaf was now flat and colourless. All the eastward slope of Spierpoint Down, where the College buildings stood, lay lost in shadow; above and behind, on the high lines of Chanctonbury and Spierpoint Ring, the first day of term was gently dying.

  In the House Room thirty heads were bent over their books. Few form-masters had set any preparation that day. The Classical Upper Fifth, Charles Ryder's new form, were "revising last term's work" and Charles was writing his diary under cover of Hassall's History. He looked up from the page to the darkling texts which ran in Gothic script around the frieze. "Qui diligit Deum diligit et fratrem suum."

  "Get on with your work, Ryder," said Apthorpe.

  Apthorpe has greased into being a house-captain this term, Charles wrote. This is his first Evening School. He is being thoroughly officious and on his dignity.

  "Can we have the light on, please?"

  "All right. Wykham-Blake, put it on." A small boy rose from the under-school table. "Wykham-Blake, I said. There's no need for everyone to move."

  A rattle of the chain, a hiss of gas, a brilliant white light over half the room. The other light hung over the new boys' table.

  "Put the light on, one of you, whatever your names are."

  Six startled little boys looked at Apthorpe and at one another, all began to rise together, all sat down, all looked at Apthorpe in consternation.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake."

  Apthorpe leaned over their heads and pulled the chain; there was a hiss of gas but no light. "The bye-pass is out. Light it, you." He threw a box of matches to one of the new boys who dropped it, picked it up, climbed on the table and looked miserably at the white glass shade, the three hissing mantles and at Apthorpe. He had never seen a lamp of this kind before; at home and at his private school there was electricity. He lit a match and poked at the lamp, at first without effect; then there was a loud explosion; he stepped back, stumbled and nearly lost his footing among the books and ink-pots, blushed hotly and regained the bench. The matches remained in his hand and he stared at them, lost in an agony of indecision. How should he dispose of them? No head was raised but everyone in the House Room exulted in the drama. From the other side of the room Apthorpe held out his hand invitingly.

  "When you have quite finished with my matches perhaps you'll be so kind as to give them back."

  In despair the new boy threw them towards the house-captain; in despair he threw slightly wide. Apthorpe made no attempt to catch them, but watched them curiously as they fell to the floor. "How very extraordinary," he said. The new boy looked at the matchbox; Apthorpe looked at the new boy. "Would it be troubling you too much if I asked you to give me my matches?" he said.

  The new boy rose to his feet, walked the few steps, picked up the matchbox and gave it to the house-captain, with the ghastly semblance of a smile.

  "Extraordinary crew of new men we have this term," said Apthorpe. "They seem to be entirely half-witted. Has anyone been turned on to look after this man?"

  "Please, I have," said Wykham-Blake.

  "A grave responsibility for one so young. Try and convey to his limited intelligence that it may prove a painful practice here to throw matchboxes about in Evening School, and laugh at house officials. By the way, is that a workbook you're reading?"

  "Oh, yes, Apthorpe." Wykham-Blake raised a face of cherubic innocence and presented the back of the Golden Treasury.

  "Who's it for?"

  "Mr. Graves. We're to learn any poem we like."

  "And what have you chosen?"

  "Milton-on-his-blindness."

  "How, may one ask, did that take your fancy?"

  "I learned it once before," said Wykham-Blake and Apthorpe laughed indulgently.

  "Young blighter," he said.

  Charles wrote: Now he is snooping round seeing what books men are reading. It would be typical if he got someone beaten his first Evening School. The day before yesterday this time I was in my dinner-jacket just setting out for dinner at the d'Italie with Aunt Philippa before going to The Choice at Wyndhams. Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore. We live in water-tight compartments. Now I am absorbed in the trivial round of House politics. Graves has played hell with the house. Apthorpe a house-captain and O'Malley on the Settle. The only consolation was seeing the woe on Wheatley's fat face when the locker list went up. He thought he was a cert for the Settle this term. Bad luck on Tamplin though. I never expected to get on but I ought by all rights to have been above O'Malley. What a tick Graves is. It all comes of this rotten system of switching round house-tutors. We ought to have the best of Heads instead of which they try out ticks like Graves on us before giving them a house. If only we still had Frank.

  Charles's handwriting had lately begun to develop certain ornamental features—Greek E's and flourished crossings. He wrote with conscious style. Whenever Apthorpe came past he would turn a page in the history book, hesitate and then write as though making a note from the text. The hands of the clock crept on to half past seven when the porter's handbell began to sound in the cloisters on the far side of Lower Quad. This was the signal of release. Throughout the House Room heads were raised, pages blotted, books closed, fountain pens screwed up. "Get on with your work," said Apthorpe; "I haven't said anything about moving." The porter and his bell passed up the cloisters, grew faint under the arch by the library steps, were barely audible in the Upper Quad, grew louder on the steps of Old's House and very loud in the cloister outside Head's. At last Apthorpe tossed the Bystander on the table and said "All right."