From a View to a Death, page 2
The Passengers had lived at Passenger Court for about a hundred and fifty years but, as the house had been burnt down twice and rebuilt in the late nineteenth century in imitation ‘Georgian’, their seat was of no great architectural interest. But it was a comfortable house to stay in because Mrs. Passenger was herself quite fond of food, and her husband, in spite of his shortcomings, rarely hung about after meals to embarrass his daughters’ guests.
Leaving the park, Mary and Zouch struck across the fields to make a detour that would bring them at the end of their walk to the other side of the garden. Conversationally, Zouch was getting back into his stride and he knew that by the evening he would be in good form. At the same time Mary was becoming more accustomed to him. They climbed over a gate leading into a green road marked by cart-ruts. Along the other side of this road there were gorse bushes and a low hedge. As he jumped down from the gate Zouch heard someone shout to them and, looking up the road, he saw an extravagantly stylised figure break through the bracken further up the lane and jump the ditch. It was an elderly man who had shouted and who carried in his appearance something other-worldly and strange. He had a white moustache and was dressed in check riding-breeches, gaiters, a coat with two slits up the back, and a brown hat with several fishing-flies stuck into the band. He had the air of a legendary creature of the woods, Herne the Hunter almost, with a touch of the romantic gamekeeper, some Lady Chatterley’s superannuated lover, and yet at the same time he looked more of a country gentleman than perhaps any country gentleman could ever hope to look. He was followed by a spaniel of low descent.
‘Out for a walk?’ he shouted again, coming up close to them.
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘A walk before tea. This is Mr. Zouch. I don’t think you have met Major Fosdick.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Zouch.’
‘Come down for the pageant, has he?’ said Major Fosdick.
Moistly, he peered at Zouch. The skin of his face was covered with small diagonal lines, similar in pattern to those on his coat. Mary said:
‘Well, he hasn’t been told about it yet, but he will certainly be expected to take part.’
‘We want everybody we can get. Everybody.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mary, ‘I’m going to get everybody I can.’
Major Fosdick’s face, blotchy in places, worked up and down convulsively as if he were chewing gum, his dewlaps giving him something of the appearance of a bloodhound. He said:
‘I’ve just been round to see your father. About North Copse, you know. After all the place is wedge shaped, and if a few birds do sometimes come across I can’t help it, can I?’
‘It’s all rather difficult, I know.’
‘It’s a bottle-neck,’ said the Major, as if this excused any eccentricities of conduct on his part.
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘But we’ve got things all shipshape now.’
‘You have?’
Major Fosdick laughed throatily and then stopped laughing all of a sudden, as if he thought he had gone too far. He coughed several times and cleared his throat and laughed again, but irresolutely this time. His dog, all at once overcome by the heat, lay on the ground as if dead. Major Fosdick said:
‘Well, I suppose I shall have to be getting along now. Thought I’d like a bit of exercise before tea.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Mary.
‘Rehearsal on Thursday, don’t forget.’
“We won’t forget.”
‘Good-bye. Good-bye.’
Major Fosdick walked away at a smart pace, the mustard-coloured dog rising with difficulty and following at heel. They watched him turn the corner of the road and disappear. Mary fanned herself with a dock-leaf which she had picked while talking to the Major. She said:
‘I suppose we ought to be getting back now too.’
‘Who was that? He must be very hot in those clothes.’
‘He’s called Major Fosdick. They live about two miles from here, on the edge of the town. He’s got two sons. You’re sure to meet them while you’re down here.’
‘What are they like?’
Mary looked at him half-uncomprehendingly. She had not yet advanced so far as to know what people were like. Anyway she had no language in which to describe them to Zouch. She said:
‘Oh, I don’t know. One of them was in the war. The other is at Oxford. He’s rather odd.’
‘In what way?’
Mary was at a loss.
‘He’s just odd,’ she said.
They turned back in the direction of the park. The hot sky had made a deep blue rim along the horizon in front of them. In the wood near-by a bird was singing shrilly as if it were spring and not late summer.
Major Fosdick, followed by his plebeian spaniel, continued in the direction of his home. They debouched together from the green lane on to the main road, both narrowly escaping death from a Brobdingnagian bus, lumbering towards the town at fifty miles an hour on the wrong side of the road. Wholly enveloped in the cloud of dust and petrol-fumes left in its trail, more than ever like a spectre conjured up out of the mist, the Major tramped along, crunching down the small stones that had been scattered over the tar.
Major Fosdick was thinking that he had told that fellow Passenger what was what. Just because he lived in a big house that was no reason why he should imagine that he owned every bird in the county. The sun flickered over the pronounced pattern of the Major’s coat and lit up the elbows, which had been reinforced with leather.
He was reaching the outskirts of the town now and he could see his own house only a few hundred yards off. It was a small house and stood a little way back from the road, and there were posts along the front of it connected by chains. Major Fosdick, who had seen the façade many times before from this aspect, still wished that he could afford something larger. He was about to pass between the posts and enter his house when he noticed that Joanna Brandon was coming up the street towards him. It was proving an eventful afternoon.
‘Hullo, Joanna,’ he shouted.
Joanna advanced in his direction, making a non-committal gesture at him with the dog-whip she carried. She was followed by two dropsical mongrels like monstrously swollen caterpillars, who were soon snuffling and grunting round the Major’s dog, bent on picking, if possible, a quarrel.
‘Out for a walk?’
‘Yes,’ said Joanna, ‘I’ve been taking the dogs for a run.’
She was a thin girl, about the same age as Mary Passenger.
‘Dogs want plenty of exercise,’ said Major Fosdick. He watched Joanna’s dogs without approval and stirred one of them with his stick.
‘They come out with me every afternoon. I usually have nothing else to do.’
‘Why not drop in and have some tea?’ said the Major.
He was not particularly interested in how Joanna spent her afternoons, but he had a weakness for young girls and admired the way she carried herself.
‘It’s just about tea-time,’ he said.
‘I can’t. I must get back and see how mother is getting on.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course. I’ve just been up to see Vernon Passenger. About North Copse, you know.’
‘Oh, have you?’
‘It’s a wedge.’
‘Is it?’ said Joanna, who had no idea what the Major was talking about and cared less.
‘He took it all in very good part,’ said Major Fosdick, implying that the interview had ended in physical violence. ‘He knows as well as I do that it’s not my fault if a few of his birds come over. It’s a bottle-neck. On the way back I met Mary Passenger and a young man who is staying up there with them. A young fellow with a beard.’
‘Did you?’
‘I had a few words with them about the pageant. You’re coming to the rehearsal on Thursday, of course?’
‘Oh yes. Of course.’
‘We must get everybody we can. People are bound to drop out at the last moment.’
‘They always do, don’t they?’
‘Well, I suppose I must be getting on now if you really won’t come in and have some tea.’
‘No really, thanks. Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, Joanna.’
She waved her whip and once more Major Fosdick advanced between the posts. The front door was ajar and he walked through and, opening the inner door, he hung his hat on one of the massive hooks of the mahogany umbrella-stand. Then he went into the drawing-room, a small room packed with furniture, the walls of which were entirely covered with landscapes in water-colour, executed by his wife. His two sons, Jasper and Torquil, were sitting at tea. Major Fosdick hardly saw them. He was so used to their being there and to their looking exactly as they looked at that moment that he noticed them no more than he noticed the horsehair settee in the middle of the room or the gnu’s head in the hall.
The names of the Fosdick sons had been in the Fosdick family for several generations and were not therefore in themselves any indication of personal eccentricity. On the contrary, it was in this case the names which took on a vicarious importance from their owners rather than the reverse and, on the whole, more probable process. Jasper was the elder and the one who had been in the army. He was tall and seemed to be all knees and elbows and his ears stuck out like outstretched wings on either side of his head. He wore a small moustache of clipped ginger hair of coarse quality and his mouth was usually a little open, hinting of adenoids. He had had several jobs since the Armistice. Nine, to be exact. That was in the first three years after the war. By that time it became clear that he was unsuited to the sort of job that was available. However, at the moment he had prospects because he had been promised the secretaryship of the local golf club when that post fell vacant and that might be soon, because the present secretary was known to have a weak heart. Meanwhile Jasper lived at home and practised short approach shots.
Torquil, on the other hand, was at Oxford. He had been begotten by his parents in a completely different mood from that which had resulted in Jasper. Torquil was small and dark and hungry-looking, with an enormous head that looked as if it might snap off at any moment and fall from his shoulders. He was dressed in the prevailing Oxford fashion of a saffron-coloured high-necked jumper and dove-grey flannel trousers. But in spite of this he was a serious young man who intended to make a career for himself. Somebody had suggested the Church. He himself favoured the Bar.
Mrs. Fosdick was not in the room. She had finished her tea and she was in the garden, picking flowers for the dinner-table. Major Fosdick was as unaware of her absence as he was of the presence of his sons. He took a scone, the only remaining one, from the dish and put it whole into his mouth. When he had swallowed it he said:
‘I suppose you two boys know that there is a rehearsal of the pageant on Thursday?’
Jasper said: ‘Oh yes, rather.’
That conversation came to an end. Major Fosdick went on to walnut cake. He was not entertained by either of his sons. He was scarcely aware that the other two persons in the room were his sons. He said:
‘I went up and saw old Passenger about North Copse this afternoon. Of course he climbed down at once. There was nothing else for him to do.’
Torquil had begun to smoke a cigarette. He smoked it with a short intake of breath, expelling the smoke abruptly in little puffs, as if he were spitting flies from his lip. Major Fosdick said:
‘I met Mary Passenger on the way back. They’ve got a young man staying up there. With a beard.’
Jasper, who had begun to read the paper, gave a sudden cackle of laughter at this piece of information, but did not look up. Torquil puffed out a little eddy of smoke and, almost interested, said:
‘Is he going to be in the pageant?’
‘I suppose so,’ said his father, trying to make up his mind if he would eat another slice of walnut cake or whether that would spoil his dinner.
Jasper returned to the sports page of his paper, making surprised whistling noises at intervals as he read of startling athletic achievements. At last he threw the newspaper on the floor and, getting up, he put his hands in his pockets and said:
‘I think I’ll barge along and call on Joanna and ask her if she’d like to come in for a spot of badminton next week.’
Major Fosdick said: ‘I don’t think I should go now if I were you, as I spoke to her just before coming in here and she said that she had to go back to her mother. I suggested that she should come and have tea here but she wouldn’t come.’
‘I might barge over just the same. If she’s out I’ll look up young Kittermaster and we might do some putting on their lawn.’
Major Fosdick did not answer. He was thinking of other things. Torquil finished his cigarette and threw it into the fireplace. He said in his high-pitched voice:
‘Jasper, do you think if I gave a cocktail party at the Fox and Hounds that I could get the Orphans to come and play?’
Jasper collapsed into his armchair again and, in a tremendously energetic piece of overacting, he began to shake with simulated laughter. Major Fosdick finished his second piece of cake. He sat for a few minutes, thinking. Then he got up from his chair and walked slowly out of the room. He had had enough of his sons for the moment. This was his hour. The time to please himself. A period of mental relaxation.
He went upstairs to his dressing-room and when he had arrived there he locked the door. Then he turned to the bottom drawer of his wardrobe, where he kept all his oldest shooting-suits. He knelt down in front of this and pulled it open. Below the piles of tweed was a piece of brown paper and from under the brown paper he took two parcels tied up with string. Major Fosdick undid the loose knots of the first parcel and took from out of it a large picture-hat that had no doubt been seen at Ascot some twenty years before. The second parcel contained a black sequin evening dress of about the same date. Removing his coat and waistcoat, Major Fosdick slipped the evening dress over his head and, shaking it so that it fell down into position, he went to the looking-glass and put on the hat. When he had it arranged at an angle that was to his satisfaction, he lit his pipe and, taking a copy of Through the Western Highlands with Rod and Gun from the dressing-table, he sat down. In this costume he read until it was time to change for dinner.
For a good many years now he had found it restful to do this for an hour or two every day when he had the opportunity. He himself would have found it difficult to account for such an eccentricity to anyone whom he might have happened to encounter during one of these periods and it was for this reason that he was accustomed to gratify his whim only at times when there was a reasonable expectation that his privacy would be respected by his family. Publicly he himself would refer to these temporary retirements from the arena of everyday life as his Forty Winks.
Relieved at her success in having avoided the longueurs of tea at the Fosdicks’, Joanna whistled to the dogs and set out in the direction of home. It was an escape. On an afternoon as hot as this one, tea at the Fosdicks’ was not to be thought of. One of the reasons against it was that Jasper Fosdick was in love with her. He had been in love with her in a heavy, dumb-animal sort of way almost as long as she could remember. At least, it seemed as long as that to Joanna. She could imagine how solicitous he would have been, in spite of the heat, if she had accepted his father’s invitation. She did not care for Jasper. She preferred Torquil, if a choice had to be made. She walked across the cobbled market-place, past the war memorial, and went up a side turning.
As was usual at this time of day, the Orphans were at the corner of the street with their organ. The bright sunlight splashed against the sweat of their faces and the patent-leather peaks of the yachting caps that they wore. Their organ was playing Les Cloches de Corneville, and they were taking it in turns to work the handle, the unoccupied pair making it their business to importune, when it occurred to them to do so, anyone who passed by and at other times, when the street was empty, to twitch and grumble at each other. There was a notice in front of the organ which said Friend, Spare a Penny for us, Orphans of this Town. That was all. There was no appeal to patriotism except of a purely local sort and there was no recital of past achievements, military or otherwise, which might rationally be supposed to carry with them a right to the gratitude of the nation at large. On the contrary the postulation rested wholly on the handicap of loss of parents, which because the youngest of the Orphans must have been at least forty years of age, was in their case presumed to have persisted into early middle life. The three of them had small round heads and beady half-closed eyes. Hair grew on their faces but not successfully. It was sporadic, and in the case of one of the Orphans only was it of sufficient density to form a moustache. Nor was this entirely satisfactory as a feature on account of its colour and unpleasant texture, recalling in this respect Jasper Fosdick’s upper lip.
Joanna crossed to the other side of the street when she saw the Orphans, not because she disliked them, still less because she had misgivings that following the precedent set by an older member of their family, whose movements were now somewhat circumscribed, one of the Orphans would behave in a startlingly unconventional manner. An incident of this sort had in fact taken place in the past which had resulted in authority discouraging the public appearance of this senior member of the family. Useful work therefore had been found for him at home, where the Orphans lived together in a cottage with a sister who shared their mental attitude and who did the cooking for them. Joanna knew of this incident, which had been described to her at some length by Mrs. Dadds, but her own imagination remained unexcited by the saga. Her curiosity was not stirred either. To Joanna indeed it seemed only a more highly coloured passage in the warp and woof of provincial life.
Joanna crossed the road because she had no money to speak of in her purse and, walking on the far side, the question of alms would not arise, because the Orphans had never explored the possibilities of stationing one of their number on each side of the street. Instead, the unoccupied pair stood at opposite ends of the organ and swept off their yachting-caps at everyone who passed. As a benefaction to the first of them did not absolve the donor from being pestered by the second, the pleasure of giving was considerably vitiated. At this time of day there was no traffic and the Orphan who was turning the handle did so lethargically and the notes emerged in an uncertain and strained way from the organ’s lid. Like everyone else, the Orphans were affected by the prospective storm which seemed now as if it might burst at any moment.
