Week-End at Cwm Tatws
I SHOULDN’T bring the story up – there’s nothing in it really, except the sequel – if it wasn’t already current in a garbled form. What happens to me I prefer told my own way, or not at all. Point is: I fell for that girl at first sight. So much more than sympathetic, as well as being in the beauty queen class, that…
In spite of my looking such a fool, too.
And probably if she’d had a wooden leg, a boss eye and only one tooth… Not that I was particularly interested in teeth at the moment, or in any position to utter more than a faint ugh, or even to smile a welcome. But how considerate of her to attend to me before taking any steps to deal with the heavy object on my lap! Most girls would have gone off into hysteria. But she happened to be practical; didn’t even pause to dial 999. Saw with half an eye that… Put first things first. Besides looking such a fool, I was a fool: to get toothache on a Saturday afternoon, in a place like Cwm Tatws. As I told myself continuously throughout that lost week-end.
The trouble was my being all alone: nobody to be anxious, nobody to send out a search party, nobody in the township who knew me from Adam. I had come to Cwm Tatws to fish, which is about the only reason why anyone ever comes there, unless he happens to be called Harry Parry or Owen Owens or Evan Evans or Reece Reece or… Which I’m not. Tooth had already stirred faintly on the Friday just after I registered at the Dolwreiddiog Arms; but I decided to diagnose neuralgia and kill it with aspirin. Saturday, I got up early to flog the lake, where two- and three-pounders had allegedly been rising in fair numbers, and brought along my bottle of aspirins and a villainous cold lunch.
No, to fish doesn’t necessarily mean being a Hemingway fan; after all, there was Izaak Walton, whom I haven’t read either.
By mid-afternoon Tooth woke up suddenly and began to jump about like… I hooked a couple of sizeables, though nothing as big as advertised; both broke away. My error was waiting for the lucky third. That, and forgetting that it was Saturday afternoon. It was only when I got back to Cwm Tatws, which has five pubs (some bad, some worse), a police station, a post office, a branch bank and so forth – largish place for that district – that I decided to seek out the town tooth-drawer, Mr Griffith Griffiths, whose brass plate I had noticed next to ‘Capel Beulah 1861’.
Not what you thought. Mr Griffith Griffiths was at home all right, most cordial, and worked Saturday afternoons and evenings because that was the day when everyone… But he had recently slipped on a wet rock in his haste to gaff a big one and chipped a corner off his left elbow. Gross bad luck: he was left-handed.
‘Let’s look at it,’ he said. And he did. ‘No hope in the world of saving that poor fellow. I must yank him out at once. Pity on him, now, that he’s a hind molar, indeed!’
What should X do next? Mr Griffith-heard-you-the-first-time will be out of action for the next month. X could of course hire a motor-car and drive thirty miles over the hills to Denbigh, where maybe tomorrow…
I pressed and pleaded. ‘Is there nobody in this five-pub town capable of… A blacksmith, for instance? Or a barber? Why not the vet? Under your direction?’
‘Well now, indeed, considering the emergency, perhaps, as you say, Mr Rowland Rowlands the veterinarian might consent to practise on you that which he practises on the ewes.’
Unfortunately Mr Rowland-say-it-twice had driven off to Denbigh himself in the last ‘bus-motorr’ (as they call it in Cwm Tatws), to visit his whatever she was.
Mr Griffith Griffiths right-handedly stroked his stubby chin. He couldn’t shave now and thought the barber saloon vulgar and low. Said: ‘Well, well, now, I shouldn’t wonder if dear old Mr Van der Pant might peradventure play the good Samaritan. He is English too, and was qualified dental surgeon in Cwm Tatws, not altogether fifteen years ago; for it was from Mr Van der Pant that I bought this practice. A nice old gentleman, though a confirmed recluse and cannot speak a single word of Welsh.’
Welshlessness being no particular disadvantage in the circumstances, I hurried off to Rhododendron Cottage, down a wet lane, and up an avenue of wetter rhododendrons. By this time my tooth was…
You are wrong again. I found Mr Van der Pant also at home, and he had not even broken an arm. But took ten minutes to answer the bell, and then came out only by accident, having been too deaf to hear it.
Let us cut short the dumb-show farce: eventually I made him understand and consent to…
The room was… Macabre, isn’t it? ‘Only Adults Admitted.’ Had been locked up since whenever, by the look of it. Cobwebs like tropical creepers. Dental chair deep in dust. Shutters askew. No heating. Smell of mice. Presence of mice. Rusty expectoration bowl and instrument rack. Plaster fallen in heaps from the ceiling. Wallpaper peeled off. Fascinating, in a way.
I helped him screw in an electric light bulb, and said: ‘No, please don’t bother to light a fire!’
‘Yes, it must come out,’ he wheezed. ‘Pity that it’s a posterior molar. Even more of a pity that I am out of anaesthetics.’
Fortunately he discovered that the forceps had been put away with a thin coat ing of oil, easily wiped off with… He eyed it lovingly. Might still be used.
Was used.
By this time the posterior molar… Or do I repeat myself? It could hardly have been more unfortunate, he complained. That forceps was not at all the instrument he should have chosen. Mr Griffith Griffiths had bought his better pair along with the practice. Still, he’d do his best. Would I mind if he introduced a little appliance to fix my jaws apart, so that he could work more cosily? He was getting on in years, he said, and a little rusty.
And please would I keep still? Yes, yes, most unfortunate. He had cut the corner of my mouth, he was well aware, but that was because I had jerked.
Three minutes best unrecorded. Not even adults admitted.
Mr Van der Pant then feared that we were getting nowhere. That forceps!
Tooth was rotten and he had nipped off the crown. Now we must go deeper, into the gum. It might hurt a little. And, please, would I keep still this time? I should experience only a momentary pain, and then… Perhaps if I permitted him to lash me to the chair? His heart was none too good, and my struggles…
Poor blighter! ‘You can truss me up like an Aylesbury duckling, if you care, so long as you dig this… tooth out,’ I said. He couldn’t hear, of course, but guessed, and went out to fetch yards and yards of electric light flex.
Trussed me up good and proper: sailor fashion. ‘Had he ever been dentist in a man-of-war?’ I asked. But he smiled deafly. It was now about six-thirty on Saturday evening, and curiously enough he had begun telling me of the famous murderer – one Crippen, before my time – who had been his fellow dental-student when… His last words were: ‘And I also had the privilege once of attending his wife and victim, Miss Belle Ellmore, an actress, you will remember. She had split an incisor while biting on an…’
I wish people would finish their sentences.
So, as I say, she turned up, providentially, at about eleven-fifteen, Monday, Mr Van der Pant’s grand-niece, on a surprise visit. Lovely girl, straight out of Bond Street, or a band-box.
And there I sat in that dank room, on that dusty dental chair, with a dead dentist across my knees; my jaws held apart by a little appliance, a chill, a ripening abscess, my arms and legs and trunk bound tightly with yards of flex; not to mention, of course…
Yes, I like to tell it my own way, though there’s not much in it. Might have happened to any other damned fool.
But the sequel! Now that really was…
The Full Length
WILLIAM (‘THE KID’) Nicholson, my father-in-law, could never rid himself of the Victorian superstition that a thousand guineas were a thousand guineas; income tax seemed to him a barbarous joke which did not, and should not, apply to people like myself. He had a large family to support, and as a fashionable portrait painter was bound to keep up appearances which would justify his asking the same prices for a full length a
s his friends William Orpen and Philip de Laszlo. He excelled in still-lifes and, though complaining that flowers were restless sitters, would have liked to paint nothing else all day except an occasional landscape. But full-length commissions were what he needed. ‘Portraits seldom bounce,’ he told me.
When I asked him to explain, he said: ‘I have been painting and selling, and painting and selling for so many years now that my early buyers are beginning to die off or go bankrupt. Forgotten W.N. masterpieces keep coming up for auction, and have to be bought in at an unfair price, five times as much as they originally earned, just to keep the W.N. market steady. Some of them are charming and make me wonder how I ever painted so well; but others plead to have their faces turned to the wall quick. Such as those!’
It had come to a crisis in Appletree Yard. The Inland Revenue people, he told me, had sent him a three-line whip to attend a financial debate; also, an inexpert collector of his early work had died suddenly and left no heirs, so that his agent had to buy in three or four paintings which should never have been sold. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out,’ the Kid muttered despondently. ‘What I need now is no less than two thousand guineas in ready cash. Pray for a miracle, my boy!’
I prayed, and hardly two hours had elapsed, before a ring came at the studio door and in walked Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr escorted by one Fulton, a butler, both wearing deep mourning. The Kid had not even known of her existence hitherto, but she seemed solid enough and the name Mucklehose-Kerr was synonymous with Glenlivet Whisky; so he was by no means discourteous.
The introductions over, Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr pressed the Kid’s hand fervently, and said: ‘Mr Nicholson, I know you will not fail me: you and you alone are destined to paint my daughter Alison.’
‘Well,’ said the Kid, blinking cautiously, ‘I am pretty busy at this season, you know, Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr. And I’ve promised to take my family to Cannes in about three weeks’ time. Still, if you make a point of it, perhaps the sittings can be fitted in before I leave Town.’
‘There will be no sittings, Mr Nicholson. There can be no sittings.’ She dabbed her eyes with a black-lace handkerchief. ‘My daughter passed over last week.’
It took the Kid a little while to digest this, but he mumbled condolences, and said gently: ‘Then I fear that I shall have to work from photographs.’
Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr answered in broken tones: ‘Alas, there are no photographs. Alison was so camera-shy. She used to say: “Mother, why do you want photographs? You will always have me to look at – me myself, not silly old photographs!” And now she has passed over, and not left me so much as a snapshot. On my brother’s advice I went to Mr Orpen first and asked him what I am now asking you; but he answered that the task was beyond him. He said that you were the only painter in London who could help me, because you have a sixth sense.’
Orpen was right in a way. The Kid had one queer parlour trick. He would suddenly ask a casual acquaintance: ‘How do you sign your name?’ and when he answered: ‘Herbert B. Banbury’ (or whatever it was), would startle him by writing it down in his own unmistakable handwriting.
‘Look, here is her signature; this is the cover of her history exercise book.’
As he hesitated, his eye caught sight of the bounced canvases, leaning against the table on which lay the Income Tax demand. ‘It is a difficult commission, Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr,’ he said.
‘I am willing to pay two thousand guineas,’ she answered, ‘for a full length.’
‘It is not the money…’ he protested.
‘But Fulton will tell you all about dear Alison,’ pleaded Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr, weeping unrestrainedly. ‘Miss Alison was a beautiful girl, Fulton, was she not?’
‘Sweetly pretty,’ Fulton agreed with fervour. ‘Pretty as a picture, madam.’
‘I know you will consent, Mr Nicholson, and of course I will choose one of her own dresses for her to wear. The one I liked best.’
There was nothing for it but to consent.
The Kid took Fulton to the Café Royal that evening and plied him with whisky and questions.
‘Blue eyes?’ – ‘Bluish, sir, and a bit watery. But sweetly pretty.’
‘Hair?’ – ‘Mousy, sir, like her nature, and worn in a bun.’
‘Figure?’ – ‘So, so, Mr Nicholson, so, so! But she was a very sweet young lady, was Miss Alison.’
‘Any physical peculiarities?’ – ‘None, sir, that leaped to the eye. But I fear I am not a good hand at descriptions.’
‘Had she no friends who could sketch her from memory?’ – ‘None, Mr Nicholson. She lived a most retired life.’
So the Kid drew a blank with Fulton, and his parlour trick did not help at all because he lacked the complementary faculty (with which Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr credited him, but which, in his own phrase, was a different pair of socks altogether) of conjuring up a person from a signature. The next day, in despair, he consulted his brother-in-law, the painter James Pryde. ‘Jimmy, what on earth am I to do now?’
Jimmy thought awhile and then, being a practical Scot, answered: ‘Why not find out from Fulton whether the girl ever went to a dentist?’
Sir Rockaway Timms happened to be a fellow-member of the Savile, and the Kid hurried to Wimpole Street to consult him.
‘Rocks, old boy, I’m in a fearful hole.’
‘Not for the first time, Kid.’
‘It’s about a girl of eighteen called Alison Mucklehose-Kerr, one of your patients.’
‘You should leave ’em alone until they reach the age of discretion. Oh, you artists!’
‘I never set eyes on her. And now, it seems, she’s dead.’
‘Bad, bad! By her own hand?’
‘I want to know what you know about her.’
‘I can only show you the map of her mouth, if that’s any morbid satisfaction to you. I have it in this cabinet. Wait a moment. M… Mu… Muck… Here you are! Crowded incisors; one heavily and clumsily stopped rear molar; one ditto lightly and neatly stopped by me; malformed canines; wisdom teeth not yet through.’
‘For Heaven’s sake, Rocks, what did she look like? It’s life or death to me.’
Sir Rockaway glanced at the Kid quizzically. ‘What do I get out of this?’ he asked.
‘An enormous box of liqueur chocolates swathed in pink ribbon.’
‘Accepted, on behalf of Edith. Well, this Alison whom you betrayed in the dark forest was a sallow, lumpish, frightened Scots lassie with a slight cast in the off eye – but, for all that, the spitting image of Lillian Gish!’
The Kid wrung Sir Rockaway’s hand as violently as Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr had wrung his own at parting. Then he rushed out to his waiting taxi.
‘Driver,’ he shouted. ‘The Birth of a Nation, wherever it’s showing, as fast as your wheels will carry us!’
Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr, summoned to Appletree Yard a week later, uttered a moan of delight the moment she entered the studio. ‘It is Alison, it is my Alison to the life, Mr Nicholson!’ she babbled. ‘I knew your genius would not fail me. But oh! how well and happy she is looking since she passed over!… Fulton, Fulton, tell Mr Nicholson how wonderful he is!’
‘You have caught Miss Alison’s expression, sir, to the dot!’ pronounced Fulton, visibly impressed.
Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr insisted on buying two of the bounced and unworthy early Nicholsons which happened to be lying face-up on the floor. The Kid had been on the point of painting them over; and his obvious reluctance to sell made her offer twelve hundred guineas for the pair.
He weakly accepted; forgetting what a terrible retribution the Inland Revenue people would visit on him next year.
God Grant Your Honour Many Years
I SLIT OPEN the flimsy blue envelope and, pulling out an even flimsier typewritten slip, began to read without the least interest; but recoiled like the man in Amos who carelessly leans his hand on a wall and gets bitten by a serpent. The Spanish ran:
With regard to a matter that should prove of interest to your Honour
: please be good enough to appear in person at this Police Headquarters on any working day of the present month between the hours of 10 and 12. Business: to withdraw your Residence Permit.
God grant your Honour many years!
Signed: Emilio Something-or-other.
Stamped in purple: The Police
Headquarters, Palma de Mallorca.
For two or three minutes I sat grinning cynically at the nasty thing. ‘Para retirar la Autorización de Residencia!’ Well, that was that!
Though often warned that in a totalitarian state anything might happen, without warning, without mercy, without sense, I had imagined it could never happen to me. I first came to Majorca, twenty-five years ago, during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship; and stayed on throughout the subsequent Republic. Then one fine summer’s day in 1936 small bombs, and leaflets threatening larger bombs, began to fall on Palma; soldiers hauled down the Republican flag; unknown young men with rifles invaded our village of Binijiny and tried to shoot the Doctor by mistake for a Socialist politician; the boat service to Barcelona was suspended; coffee and sugar disappeared from the shops; all mail ceased; and one day the British Consul scrawled me a note:
Dear Robert,
This afternoon H.M.S. Grenville will evacuate British nationals: probably your last chance of leaving Spain in safety. Luggage limited to one handbag. Strongly advise your coming.
I hastily packed my handbag with manuscripts, underclothes and a Londonish suit.
An hour later Kenneth, two other friends and I were heading for the port in the taxi which the Consul had considerately sent out to us. Thus we became wretched refugees, and wretched refugees we continued to be for ten years more until the Civil War had been fought to a bloody close, until the World War had broken out and run its long miserable course, and finally until the Franco Government, disencumbered of its obligations to the Axis, had found it possible to sanction our return. Reader, never become a refugee, if you can possibly avoid it, even for the sake of that eventual happy homecoming in an air-taxi, with a whole line of bristly village chins awaiting your fraternal salute. Stay where you are, kiss the rod and, if very hungry, eat grass or the bark off the trees. To live in furnished rooms and travel about from country to country – England, Switzerland, England, France, the States, England again – homesick and disorientated, seeking rest but finding none, is the Devil’s own fate.