It was not that George was out of his mind, merely that his stroke had afflicted him, not only with hemiplegia, but also with nominal aphasia, that condition in which the sufferer finds it difficult to remember nouns, common terms, the names of familiar objects. (Bernard was in the habit of saying that he found nothing nominal here; it was as real and literal and concrete as anything he had ever come across.) Like other aphasics of this kind, George was otherwise fluent and accurate and responded normally to others’ speech. His fluency was especially notable; he was very good at not pausing at moments when a sympathetic hearer could have supplied the elusive word. Doctors, including Dr Mainwaring, had stated that the defect might clear up altogether in time, or might diminish to a greater or lesser extent in time, or might stay as it was, and that there was nothing to be done about it.
Shorty, who had followed George’s discourse without trouble, said in a voice about an octave below his usual light tenor, ‘Him fella big chief. Him fella like de blondes and de booze. Him fella like chucking de weight about. Him fella—’
‘Bananas,’ said George, then went on in an accusatory tone, ‘But it’s an outrage. I mean, this sort of behaviour’s quite intolerable. You’re not going to tell me that that’s how a responsible politician carries on.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Bernard. ‘Nobody is. We’re all on your side. As regards this topic.’
‘All for one and one for all,’ said Shorty. ‘Hey, that reminds me of something. Old Paul Robeson. Another blackie.’ He began to sing, giving himself full production in the way of arm and head movements, eye-rolling and the like. ‘And each for a-a-all, we stand or fa-a-all, and all for each, until we reach, the journey’s end. Oh-oh oh-oh, oh-oh oh-oh, oh-oh oh-oh, oh oh-oh, oh oh—’
‘Did you watch, you know, the thing on the switching it on last night?’ asked George.
‘The television. Yes, we did,’ lied Bernard swiftly. ‘All the evening.’
‘In that case you missed a most fascinating programme on, ah – that gadget there.’ George indicated the wireless set on a small round table to the left of his bed. ‘A play about one of these … Some chaps had missed their, anyhow they all had to wait in this, er, and one of them had lost his thing you have to show when you leave a country, at least another chap had lifted his, um, where he kept the …’
George gave some account of the play he had listened to, introducing a number of chronological leaps backward and forward that had not featured in the actual production, while Shorty hummed the Paul Robeson song fairly quietly and Bernard, shifting his position every few seconds, stood and waited. Eventually George said,
‘Well, I mustn’t keep you. I know you’ve got things to do, Shorty. Trevor and Tracy coming and all that.’
‘Every man jack will have to pull together,’ said Bernard with a loose-lipped smile.
‘We’ll pop in again later, George,’ said Shorty. ‘Be seeing you.’
‘Nice of you to come up.’
Left alone, George thought of Bernard. It had indeed been nice of the old boy to pay his visit, but George had a shrewd suspicion that Adela’s influence had been at work, as always. She gave the orders and Bernard took the line of least resistance. As far as he could, in all matters not affecting the regiment, he had done the same with poor Vera while they had been together. A proper man would have run things differently, taken the decisions himself. But – what could never be said could still, surely, be thought – but Bernard was not a proper man. The facts had to be faced: he had only married Vera because a senior officer had better be married, even perhaps because there had been pressure or at least advice from above. And Vera had married him because he had asked her, because she was forty, because she was a foreigner (having been fifteen on arrival, she had never lost her Czech accent) in an England just then grown hostile to foreigners, because indeed the year was 1938, when all thoughts of returning to Pilsen must finally be abandoned; and also because she had been fond of him.
George’s reflections became vaguer, less like acts of memory than the inattentive turning-through of a book read many times before. Seen like this, from this distance, the wedding and the scandal had the look almost of a single event – the revelation that Bernard was having an affair with his servant, a Pte D. Shortell, the arrangement whereby Bernard had been allowed to send in his papers, to resign and salve the honour of the regiment instead of being cashiered, Vera’s first departure, her return to find Bernard no longer interested in keeping up what had always been a pretence, her second and final departure. But there must have been some interval, if only because Vera had borne a child, a son who had emigrated to Canada at the earliest opportunity and never been heard of since.
That son, that nephew, named Stanley some way after his maternal grandfather, Stanislas, was never mentioned either. George half opened his eyes. He himself, he felt certain, would not have allowed any child of his to fall out of mind like that. But there was no such child; his wife had apologized to him in her last hours for its non-existence. What had he said in return? He never could remember.
The slam of a car door woke him. His watch showed twelve-forty. Splendid: practically the whole morning gone, and Trevor and Tracy due very soon.
Five
The sitting-room at Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage was the least dark room in the house, with a couple of fair-sized leaded windows looking on to the back garden. And today, at least, it was not cold. A log fire was well alight in the iron grate-basket, hissing steadily and emitting equally steady jets of smoke in various directions, but quite red underneath.
There was too much furniture and too many ornaments, because too many people had refused to part with too many of their larger possessions on coming here to live, and because the box-room upstairs was small, with a leaky ceiling which a succession of men had failed to repair after a lot of trying, or a lot of behaviour that might have suggested to a not very inquisitive observer that they were trying. Only George was under-represented in the sitting-room, since his physical and moral position prevented him from insisting effectively, even to Adela, that the box-room was an unsuitable place for part of his library, protected by a tarpaulin though it was.
So here were Shorty’s huge unrepairable cuckoo-clock, his gold-painted trolley with glass trays, his full-colour reproduction showing a windjammer in a heavy sea, his black upright piano, which he played now and then on evenings when he was not too drunk to do so and Adela had not had a hard day. Bernard had contributed a rocking-chair, a nest of rosewood tables, a tiled coffee-table, a large terrestrial globe on a papier-mâché stand, a Benares brass bowl in which people had put their visiting-cards at one time, a sort of idol and a massive glass-fronted mahogany bookcase which had stayed locked with its key lost for over a year without causing inconvenience. Two upright chairs with tapestry seats and backs, one much worn, the other looking almost new, an oak wine-cooler now full of Michaelmas daisies, a second nest of tables, a watercolour of Anne Hathaway’s cottage and a print of Susanna and the Elders belonged to Adela. There was in addition a gilt Louis Quinze suite comprising a sofa and two chairs, a Chippendale looking-glass and a half-life-size alabaster statuette of a nearly nude youth with his finger to his lips – a mute recommendation which, according to Bernard, was far too little heeded. These objects stood on a dark-red carpet bought second-hand in Newmarket, or hung on walls papered in a pattern of immense unidentified flowers and here and there exuding moisture.
One article owned in common was the radio. Bernard was listening to it now, or sat nearby while there issued from it, slightly off frequency, a short play about putatively comic clergymen. Within his reach stood a glass of tonic-water. It was not that he liked tonic-water much, just that, on advice that he would be dead in a few months if he went on as he was going, he had long given up alcohol, a step he sometimes pondered over. He was smoking a cigarette, not that he liked cigarettes much, just that smoking and not drinking seemed to him in s
ome way better than not smoking and not drinking.
The door opened suddenly, with a thudding noise because it was considerably warped, and in came Marigold Pyke, the fifth of the five members of the household. She was seventy-three and, like Shorty, thought she could pass for sixty; in fact, she looked a very, very well-preserved seventy-three, with short white hair carefully blonde-rinsed, a figure still recognizably female, bright grey eyes, a lined mouth. Today she was dressed to kill, to annihilate utterly, thought Bernard as, not without reluctance, he glanced at her: trouser-suit in biscuit-coloured wool, frilly chiffon shirt, two-tone leather-and-suède shoes with tassels at the ends of the laces. Also in evidence were a handbag in worn but real crocodile-skin, its reality seldom left to be taken for granted, a jewelled brooch in the form of a miniature basket of flowers, a pair of unnaturally large pearl earrings, and a shagreen cigarette-holder attached by way of a corkscrew pin to a shagreen ring on the middle finger of the left hand. As always on viewing the last item afresh, Bernard was struck by the marvellously consistent high level of the rage it aroused in him, and his imagination filled with vague but inspiriting schemes for its disposal – mounting a fake burglary, contriving to slam the lid of Shorty’s piano on it and the hand that wore it, etc.
‘Good morning, Bernard.’ Marigold’s voice was of the sort that set minds like Bernard’s in quest of wine-merchants’ adjectives: round, full, fruity, well-matured, big. ‘Any sign of Trevor and Tracy?’ – her elder grandson and his wife.
‘No sign I’ve been able to interpret as such, but then I don’t know anything to speak of about divination. I certainly haven’t noticed any comets or eclipses. On a more mundane level, if any sort of herald person had come prancing up to the door I’m pretty certain I should have been told, and quickly at that. Shorty’s been about all the morning and I’m prepared to swear he wouldn’t have kept anything like that from me.’
Marigold had, to put the action perhaps too prosaically, sat down on the Louis Quinze sofa, her property, like the glass and the silence-enjoining youth. ‘Why do you dislike them so much? They’re always nice to you.’
‘Indeed they are, and I appreciate it, and I assure you I dislike them as little as I dislike anybody, less than most, in fact.’
‘I think people in general would say that they’re an exceptionally pleasant couple.’
‘I’ve no doubt that, if challenged, people would say that.’
‘Must we have that on?’
Bernard turned off the clergymen. There was silence, but not for long: Marigold felt she had not yet squarely made her point. She said,
‘You wouldn’t find a more agreeable pair of youngsters anywhere.’
‘That may well be literally true.’
‘They certainly are Mr and Mrs Trackle-Packles.’
This last expression, meaning roughly that the two under discussion were unusually attractive, was one of a large and extensible number habitually on Marigold’s lips. And not only there: she had once had a checkle-peckle returned by her bank because it had been made out for five poundies. At the start, more than fifty years ago, she had used such phrases to gain what was planned as favourable social/sexual attention; later, their object had been simply to establish her as different from her contemporaries; nowadays, they turned up out of nothing more than force of habit, not consciously intended by her, barely noticed by those who had known her any length of time.
Even Bernard, at that moment, felt only a mild quickening of hostility. But he decided that, for one morning, he had put up with enough urging of what he was, or gave an appearance of being, already prepared to grant, and threw in a conversation-stopper of his most reliable sort. ‘Trevor especially. Such fine hands.’ (In fact he had never noticed Trevor’s hands, would have been reluctant to state on oath that he was quite sure Trevor had hands, had for many years paid no attention to things like the hands of a young man, nice, pleasant, trackle-packles or other.)
The response was not only further silence, but a perceptible toss of the blondified head and a slow-motion fitting of a cigarette into the shagreen holder. ‘Is there such a thing as a drink?’
‘I’m afraid not. Haven’t you heard? Drinks have ceased to exist. The Prime Minister made an announcement to that effect over the wireless just before you came in.’
Marigold laughed, thereby annoying Bernard, who had underestimated the amiability kindled in her by the impending visit. ‘Could I possibly have one, do you think?’
‘Very well, yes, I do. It must be possible, surely.’
For anything up to half a minute, Marigold looked over at the small array of bottles standing on one of the nests of tables, and, even without her spectacles as she was, might easily have been able to make out the South African sherry, the British vermouth, the Tunisian red wine, the Italian wine apéritif – a good buy, this last, relatively expensive but so vile that even Shorty could not get through a glass of it in much under the hour.
‘Something simple,’ said Marigold eventually.
‘All those look quite straightforward to me.’
‘No … I think … a small glass of that frightfully nice white wine Adela sweetly gave me for my birthday. Would that be too much trouble? Just half a glass, Bernard.’
‘Oh, just half a glass. That eases matters no end.’
Although Bernard’s leg was really hurting that day, it was not hurting as much as his mode of rising from his chair suggested. Marigold, however, her face low over her opened handbag, appeared not to notice, whereupon he let a long wailing fart. She noticed that.
‘You might have had the common courtesy to wait until you were out of the room.’
‘I might well, yes, and I did try, but you were so long deciding on your drink that the pressure became impossible to withstand.’
‘You ought to see a doctor.’
‘Probably. Anyway, I’ve arranged to do so next week.’
Six
In the kitchen, Adela and Shorty were getting near the end of those preparations which could be made before the expected guests arrived: the sprouts were cooked and drained, the potatoes boiled and mashed with butter, or rather with the mixture of margarine and butter that Adela thought tasted just like butter, the consommé, already enriched with Cyprus cream sherry, was warming on the range. All that really remained was to take the foil off the roasting capon and put it higher in the gas-oven.
‘I hope they’re coming,’ said Adela, for the third time in the last ten minutes.
‘They’d have phoned else,’ said Shorty from the stove. ‘And they’re not what you’d call late yet.’
‘Because it would be such a waste, a waste of food, if they didn’t, and such a disappointment.’
‘There’d be no waste of food, I promise you.’
‘But it would still be a disappointment. Marigold’s been looking forward to it for days and days.’
‘I must say I do think it wouldn’t be out of turn for her to be lending a bit of a hand, Adela. It’s her kid, or her kid’s kid, rather.’
‘You know how she is, not knowing where to find anything so that it’s quicker for us to do it ourselves. Not that she’s the only one.’
For Bernard now stood between them, looking slightly helpless. After so many years, slightly helpless was as helpless as he needed to look in order to convey his point to the other two.
‘Kin I elp yer wiv anyfink, squire?’ asked Shorty. ‘Render yer hassistance, like, eh, swelp me?’
‘Marigold wants that wine of hers. I was wondering where the—’
‘Say no more. The capable Shorty will handle the problem, on the understanding that you take over here for a minute, pursuing your duty with zeal and conscientiousness. I can’t see it bothering your leg, but correct me if I’m wrong.’
Bernard began stirring the indicated pan of bread sauce, to him a demeaning chore but substantially preferable to the alternative, while Sho
rty, lurching slightly with drink, went off to the coal-house, a commodious structure cold enough at almost any season to act as a cellar.
‘I got you the Telegraph,’ said Adela.
‘Thank you. Where is it? I’m supposed to keep—’
‘Oh, all right. Here.’
With a nod of further thanks, Bernard took the newspaper, but did not then and there make a start on its front page, as he would once have done. These days it and its contemporaries seemed like parish magazines of another parish than his own. He would none the less spend a large part of the afternoon reading it.
‘I do wish they’d come,’ said Adela.
‘So do I.’
‘There wasn’t as much traffic as I’d expected. And what do you think? – a very nice young boy, he couldn’t have been more than about twenty, he carried the groceries to the car. Just picked up the box; I didn’t have to ask him. I gave him ten p and he smiled so sweetly. I think a lot of them are like that really; it’s just that they’re so different in other ways.’
‘I don’t think they’re much different.’
‘Well, that is strange, coming from you, Bernard. You must be mellowing in your old age.’
Bernard managed to say nothing to that. He stirred away with more vigour. Why, he wondered, did he consciously want to upset his sister’s innocent satisfaction, throw cold water on her mild pleasure at having found her expedition that little bit less taxing than she had feared? Why was it out of the question for him to produce some banal but acceptable Shorty-style phrase about a stroke of luck or people not being as black as they were painted? Because, today or yesterday or longer ago, he had stopped bothering to pretend to himself that he was different from what he had always been.