‘Why write a book about this particular fellow?’
It seemed an apt question. Mark began to answer as best he could. ‘I happen to think he wrote a number of good books himself. He was a forceful man and more influential than has been realised. He …’
The Major cut him off. ‘Interesting sort of life, I should think. Could fetch you up all over the place.’
‘Yes, he travelled quite a bit …’ Mark began.
The Major brushed this aside. ‘For a young chap like you, I meant. Pay well, does it?’
‘No,’ said Mark. He noted that ‘young’, with appreciation. The Major nodded gloomily. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. The dog rose to its feet, shook itself with a sound like a rug being beaten, and collapsed onto its other side.
‘Know this part of the world at all?’ enquired the Major.
This, Mark realised, could go on for some time. Not that it wasn’t agreeable enough, but it seemed the moment perhaps to direct the conversation a little more firmly. He paid a brief tribute to the surrounding landscape (blurred now beyond a curtain of thick grey rain) and went on, ‘You actually met Gilbert Strong, then, when you were a boy?’
‘Went fishing with him,’ said the Major promptly. ‘Mackerel and that sort of stuff. He didn’t ride, that I remember. Talkative fellow. I’d forgotten he was a writer. I’ll have to give one of his things a try.’
‘You knew him quite well, then?’
‘Oh yes.’
There was a pause. The Major sucked on his cigarette and blew, in quick succession, two perfect smoke-rings. Mark, who hadn’t seen that done for years, was temporarily distracted. He pulled himself together and continued, ‘Did you see him later on – after you were grown-up?’
The Major shook his head. ‘Lost touch. Or my mother did, rather. Never heard from him again. After. Well, um, afterwards.’
Mark, alerted, said, ‘Afterwards?’
The Major peered at him through a drift of smoke. ‘Fact is, the man was, um, how shall I put it, associated with my aunt.’
‘Oh. Really?’
‘Yes.’ The Major hesitated. ‘Well, not to put too fine a point on it, we’re both men of the world, they were living as man and wife.’
‘But they weren’t? Man and wife?’
‘Dear me no. Irene was married, d’you see.’
Mark, feeling slightly heady, gazed at him. The Major’s cheeks were a crimson fretwork of broken veins; his eyes were a light whisky brown and had the kindly look of an equable dog. It was odd to think that here lurked a boy who had gone mackerel fishing with Gilbert Strong.
‘I didn’t know anything about all this,’ said Mark. ‘It’s very interesting to me. I suspected something of the kind, because of a novel of his. I suppose your aunt couldn’t get a divorce?’
‘She intended to, I’ve understood. All a bit of a fuss, in the family. Upset my grandparents. But then there wasn’t time, in the end.’
‘There wasn’t time?’
‘She died,’ said the Major. ‘Poor girl. Too bad, really.’
They sat, for a few moments, in silence. The Major cleared his throat and looked away; he seemed, now, embarrassed at this revelation of past irregularity. Mark was thinking that for the first time Gilbert Strong had surprised him. He wondered why he did not feel more excited. Instead, he felt a faint unease, as though inadvertently stumbling upon the privacy of some acquaintance.
The Major cleared his throat again. ‘Yes. Tragic business. My mother was very cut up. Nasty bout of pneumonia and that was it. Didn’t have the right sort of pills in those days, did they? Strong was very cut up too, I understand. Did he get married in the end?’
‘Yes. Yes, he did.’
‘Ah well.’
‘Have you any pictures of her?’ said Mark. ‘A photograph or anything?’
The Major frowned. ‘Come to think of it, there may very well be one with my mother’s things. She kept some of Irene’s papers, I know. Whole lot of junk in boxes upstairs. Don’t know about you, but I’m very bad at throwing things away. I give these women who come to the door an armful of things for the local jumble sales from time to time, old clothes and that, you know, but I never get around to a proper turn-out.’ He sighed, evidently daunted now by the immensity of the task. ‘I dunno, though, could be wasting your time …’
‘Perhaps we could have a look,’ Mark suggested.
The Major, shaking his head doubtfully, led the way upstairs. The hall was lined with old mackintoshes, voluminous, stiff and pink with Somerset mud. There were dozens of pairs of wellingtons, racks of walking-sticks and riding-crops, bowlers and deerstalkers hanging from pegs. On the stairs and the landing above hung more framed photographs: the Major with his foot on a dead tiger, another polo team, a group of army officers. The labrador followed them, wheezing dreadfully.
This was not, the Major explained, the family home but the house he had built himself in the thirties in anticipation of the early retirement from the army which he had indeed taken immediately after the war. His parents had lived a few miles away, in Wootton Courtney. His mother’s more personal possessions had come here after her death, including, he remembered, boxes of letters.
He opened a door into a large dank room with many gloomy pieces of mahogany furniture and an iron bedstead. There was a washstand furnished with the kind of jug and basin that would have gladdened the heart of a Camden Passage antique dealer and, above the mantelpiece, an engraving after Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen. The Major went over to a high cupboard in the wall and opened it to reveal crammed shelves reaching right up to the ceiling. The labrador, at his heels, began to make snuffling noises as though about to expire. ‘Poor fellow thinks there might be a mouse,’ explained the Major. ‘Very likely, too.’
The Major pulled out various boxes and files and examined them, rather hopelessly. He gave Mark a look of appeal. ‘D’you really think it’s worth the trouble?’
‘Well, I think it might be,’ said Mark. ‘I’m sorry to be such a nuisance.’
‘Not at all, dear boy,’ said the Major valiantly. ‘Tell you what, bring the chair over and see if you can reach that stuff at the top. I have a feeling what we’re looking for might be up there.’
Perched somewhat precariously, Mark reached up and delved into an open shoe-box. He dropped a packet of letters down to the Major who fished a pair of glasses out of a breast-pocket and said, ‘Ah. Getting warmer. These are mother’s, all right. From my father, in the war. Try again.’
Standing on tiptoe now, Mark took out another thick wodge of packets. He peered at the top envelope and saw with a thud of the heart Gilbert Strong’s unmistakable handwriting; at the same moment the dog gave a hoarse bark and lunged at the leg of the chair, which lurched sideways.
He crashed to the floor. He tried to rise and felt violently sick. He head the Major say, ‘I say, my dear chap, you did come a purler.’ He rose, groggily, felt a grinding pain in his ankle and another somewhere in his chest, found that everything for some reason was turning grey, and fainted.
When he surfaced again the Major was offering him a cup of tea and talking about mice. The dog was nowhere to be seen. The Major had tucked a rather smelly tartan rug under Mark’s head. The tea was Jacksons of Piccadilly, he confided, a regular order, not from the local people. He peered at Mark. ‘I say, I am sorry about that. What a thing to happen. How d’you feel?’
Mark heaved himself up, gingerly. Both pains were still there. ‘I’m rather afraid I’ve done something to my ankle. And possibly a rib.’ He tried to stand, and subsided hastily onto the edge of the bed. The bundle of envelopes was still in his hand. He undid the string and flipped through them. Each one was addressed to Mrs Irene Lampson, in Gilbert Strong’s handwriting. He closed his eyes, opened them and looked again. His ankle hurt abominably. This whole episode, his presence in this place and this house, seemed like a bad dream. He felt like the victim of some malevolent conspiracy and stared with a mixture of di
staste and suspicion at the bundle of letters. The Major was talking about doctors.
‘I simply do not follow all this about a dog,’ said Diana. ‘But never mind. However it happened, it’s happened, that’s all that matters. I suppose this local GP knows what he’s doing. You’ll certainly have to have another check-up with our man when you eventually do get back. A week before you can use your foot! What on earth will you do with yourself?’
Mark replied that he thought he would have a good deal of reading to keep him busy.
‘I could try to get down.’
Mark hesitated, tempted. Diana’s sympathy would be brisk and practical. Part of him yearned for it, and then he thought of the conjunction of Diana and the Major, and shuddered, more for the Major’s sake than for Diana’s. ‘Don’t bother. It isn’t worth it. I’ll be all right.’
‘Well … Suzanne would go spare, just at the moment. So if you’re sure …’
The Major had himself walked down to Pump Cottage to fetch Mark’s overnight bag and settle the account with Mrs Cummings. The car could be left where it was for the time being. The exercise of trying to envisage the exchange between the Major and Mrs Cummings gave Mark his only brief passage of cheer. And now he was installed in an enormous leather armchair in the Major’s sitting-room, his bandaged foot stuck out on the pouffe and aching dreadfully. The Major was upstairs making up a bed for Mark. He had insisted on providing hospitality and would not be gainsaid. ‘ ’Fraid you may find the place a bit spartan, but I can knock you up some grub in the evenings and I daresay we might find time for a spot of backgammon when you’re not going through these letters. No trouble at all, I assure you, my dear chap, least I can do …’ The dog, banished to the kitchen during the doctor’s visit, had reappeared (‘Poor fellow says he’s most frightfully sorry’) and was once again unconscious on the hearth-rug.
Mark apparently had a badly sprained ankle and a cracked rib. Rest was the only treatment required. And so, for the second time, he was absorbed into Gilbert Strong’s territory. In this instance, imprisoned there. Discomfort and annoyance destroyed any possibility of a rational response to what had happened; so far as Mark was concerned, Gilbert Strong was responsible, whether directly or indirectly. Just as he was responsible for all the disorders of the previous months.
Grimly, he began to read the letters.
15
Bill had diagnosed Carrie’s condition within a week. ‘You,’ he said, ‘have got yourself involved with a bloke. And high time too. Come on, then, give. Where did you find him?’
Carrie, puce, denied everything.
‘All right, have it your own way. But since when did you jump a mile high every time the phone rings? Let alone spill a can of spray and lose your pruning knife. Or stand in the greenhouses staring into space. When do I get a look at him?’
That, then, was something Carrie hadn’t known herself. She had parted from Nick at Victoria and he had vanished into Suffolk to visit his mother and for four fearful days she had heard nothing from him. On the third day she knew she had never been so unhappy in her life and on the fourth she began to contemplate suicide and that evening he telephoned. He said, ‘What’s the matter? You sound funny.’ And Carrie had taken a deep breath, discarded the hours of anguish and despair, and replied that she was fine, thanks.
He came to Dean Close for the weekend. He inspected everything with the same energy and application that he had devoted to pictures and statues in Paris: the house, the greenhouses, the stock fields, the display area. He made Carrie explain mist-propagation and layering and the application of fertilisers. He spent a long time in Gilbert Strong’s study, pulling books out of the cases and looking at the pictures on the walls while Carrie hung around nervously. He said, ‘You’re something of an iceberg, do you realise?’
Carrie was alarmed, suspecting criticism.
‘You hide seven-eighths of yourself. All this … Extraordinary museum of a house and a flourishing business alongside. And there you are apparently half-dotty, wandering around Paris in a grubby T-shirt.’
‘I told you.’
‘Up to a point,’ said Nick. ‘Up to a point.’ He came across the room and put his arms round her. ‘Don’t look like that. I’m not finding fault. It’s part of your charms. What are we doing this afternoon? I’m prepared to put on gumboots and perform manual labour, if need be.’
He struck up an easy relationship with Bill. They had a long conversation about Bill’s resistance to paperwork and Nick devised a more effective system of processing orders. On Saturday evening they all three went out to the pub, where they ran into the journalist from the cottage down the road with his girlfriend. It was very convivial and Carrie found herself talking a great deal more than she usually did and indeed making people laugh. She hadn’t thought she was the kind of person who did that.
And, later that night, Nick came to her room and this time there seemed absolutely no reason why they should not make love. It was no less important, she knew, but in some way what would have been spitting in the eye of fortune back there in Paris no longer was, here at Dean Close. When she woke in the morning Nick was beside her and for a moment she was confused and thought, with various kinds of guilt, of Mark. And then Nick awoke and said, ‘If this sort of thing is going to go on, you’ll have to get a bigger bed. You kick, in your sleep.’
‘Do I?’ said Carrie, in blissful contemplation of that ‘going to go on …’
‘Yes. There have been problems of Lebensraum all night.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s what happens when nations feel themselves constricted. Don’t you know any history?’
‘No,’ said Carrie happily.
He wanted to go for an outing. Maiden Castle, he suggested, or Dorchester – that’s in these parts, isn’t it? And Carrie said, yes, let’s, but somewhere else maybe. So they climbed another hill, elsewhere, and lay on chalky turf in the last sunshine of the year and Carrie knew that all her life she had been living in a state of semi-consciousness. She had been neither unhappy nor discontented, except occasionally; but, quite simply, she had not known that this marriage of feeling and seeing and being was possible. She lay in the sun and the wind and looked sideways at Nick, at his face and his hands and his green sweater with one elbow out, and her whole body hummed in accord with the world, an accord that she had never suspected, as though she were putting out buds or leaves in response to the season. She wanted to know if Nick felt the same but could find no words that were right. She said, ‘Are you happy?’ and Nick replied, ‘Oh yes, I’m happy all right.’ He put his hand on hers and above them birds floated against the enormous heights of the Dorset sky.
Mark, ensconced now in what the Major called his study, which was devoid of books but hung about with guns and fishing-rods, read Gilbert Strong’s letters. The Major, from time to time, would appear with another cup of Jacksons tea, brewed unnervingly strong. He would then retreat, with a conniving nod of the head, as one who fully recognised the demands of intellectual life. He had produced a Remington typewriter of venerable age and minus a couple of keys; Mark, to demonstrate his appreciation, had felt obliged to write a letter to his publisher with which the Major had happily trotted to the post-box. The house was the dampest Mark had ever experienced; some of the shoes in the rack in the hall had a green fur of mildew and the books in the sitting-room case had that ripe and vaguely nostalgic smell. There was also an atmosphere of melancholy which Mark, for reasons he could not fathom, found not unpleasant. He sat, his aching foot propped on another battered leather pouffe of oriental origins, and read.
My darling … Only five hours since I left you and already I am in a wretched state. How I shall contrive to get through the next two weeks lord only knows. All the way to London you were in my head and there I sat with The Times and the New Age and a heap of books, frowning and reading, every inch the literary gent, and not a word did I see … The day we walked to Luccombe … Last night, oh Irene, last nigh
t …
The Major put his head round the door. ‘Don’t want to interrupt, but there’s a spot of dinner ready as soon as you’d care for it.’ Mark, obscurely relieved to be able to break off, said he would come at once. They went into the kitchen, for which the Major apologised (‘Fact is, I don’t get a lot of visitors these days – dining-room’s a bit dusty, I’m afraid.’), where he served a hefty meal of baked potatoes and tinned stew followed by tinned suet pudding with golden syrup and culminating with what he called a nice bit of mousetrap from the village shop. After dinner the backgammon board was produced; the Major turned out to be a nifty player, gallantly (Mark suspected) allowing his visitor to win a respectable number of games.
There were a great many letters. Disordered, in no kind of sequence, some with envelopes, some without, some giving the address of origin, some not, dated and undated. They had to be sorted, listed, read. Chronology had to be established; the cold eye of the future and of an undreamed-of stranger must be cast on these words of love and confidence.
‘Everyone sends commiserations,’ said Diana. ‘Suzanne and the Milburnes and Liz Fryer. But look, is it really all right at this Major Whatsit’s house? I mean, the pub can’t be that expensive and from what you say it’s all somewhat grotty … You’d be more comfortable. What? Well, officers’ mess circa 1935 sounds like grotty to me. No, I’m not fussing, I’m merely showing a little natural concern.’
Dear Mrs Lampson … Thank you for your letter and comments on my article. No writer, I assure you, resents an expression of informed interest and I found your remarks most stimulating. So far as Mr Conrad is concerned I do feel that …
You were not as I expected. No, that’s not right – part of you was as I expected and part was not. Spectacles, I thought, and a touch of the schoolmistress and maybe you would jaw me a bit like clever women tend to. And instead there was your wonderful laugh and the way you tilt your head when you’re listening and I never met a girl before who could walk farther and faster than I can. May I talk like this? May I say such things? Probably not, but I am, I can’t help myself, and if you are cross, well, you are cross …