The Man Who Rode Ampersand, page 26
I met my father at Victoria Station. We had a cup of tea in the cafeteria. At once it was clear that I had not begun to understand. I had thought of what had happened as a loss, a taking away which was catastrophic and irreparable but which could at least be isolated and defined. I had thought we were bereft, precisely that. I had not imagined that everything had changed, utterly and for ever. A certain moment had arrived, an irreversible process had taken place. Although I was more or less grown up, until that moment I had continued to think of myself as a sickly child and my father as a vigorous guardian, never mind his oddities; I had lolled in the tyranny of the weak. All at once my father was somebody to be protected, a person for whom I was responsible. This moment is all the more alarming because it is in the same instant that we realize that we are alone. Solitude and responsibility are the two sides of the same coin, a hard currency. My father put his hand in his pocket to pay for the tea. He had come out without any money or had spent it all over the road. I had just enough left. The journey had almost cleared me out.
For something to say, I told him that the picture of ‘September Morn’ was still there. Stella had said he would remember. He did not remember. I gave him a brief report on my trip. From time to time, he muttered something or other. By the end, he was staring at the table, hardly listening. Then with an unexpected burst of coherence, he said, ‘And Mr Polly? Did you read Mr Polly at all?’
After my return, I used to meet my father rambling about the house at all hours of the night. We exchanged mumbles: ‘the sound of the waterpipes’ . . . ‘left a book down here’ . . . ‘ah, not a burglar then’. Often he was wearing his tattered sheepskin over his pyjamas, his bare feet wet with the dew. When there was a moon, I could see him walking very slowly across the lawn. I went down to the garden and called him to come to bed. ‘No, no,’ he cried hoarsely as if I had handed down a terrible verdict on him. Once I ran into him in the dark hall. I recoiled from the wan ghost. I could not look him in the face. Neither of us spoke.
The house began to fall apart. Neither of us felt like dealing with leaks in the roof or patches of fallen plaster. Light bulbs went phut and were not replaced. I was shaving one day, looking out of the bathroom window with one foot on the lavatory, an attitude I found helpful to cerebration, and the lavatory bowl crumbled beneath my foot, dissolving into grainy dust like the slow-motion replay of an explosion. I stood startled with one leg still in the air, recalling incongruously my father gripping the lectern and drenching Ecclesiastes in autumnal melancholy: ‘Or ever the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.’ The garden went back too. The gooseberries ran wild. You could not get close enough to pick them for the thorns. Occasionally I mowed the lawn, but there was no weeding done. The jungle advanced.
My father did not spend much time in the house. When the pubs were shut, he went on expeditions. I watched him pass the window, head thrust forward, lips pressed together, eyes blinking in the rain which seemed to fall incessantly that year. I lay on the sofa like a Victorian consumptive, glad to be back with the afternoon play: ‘Can you hear the waves, Winifred?’—‘No, George, since he went away, I have not heard the waves.’ I was not receiving the waves very well either above the crackle. The wireless needed an overhaul too. It is difficult to realize how much effort is required to keep a house going until that effort is abandoned.
One by one, activities were closed down. Hens and cats were given away. One or two rooms were locked up. The wireless finally surrendered to neglect. I ate alone off corned beef andtinned peaches and Russian novels, waiting for the end of the holidays. Among other projects permanently shelved at about this time was my father’s Life of Charles Cotton, poet, angler, rakehell and putative ancestor. This was a long-running project. Materials for it had accumulated all over the house. My father rarely went into a bookshop without emerging with a fresh edition of The Compleat Angler, of which Cotton wrote the second, less famous, part. Editions of the poems, manuscript notes on them, and the scant previous memoirs were also scattered around the house. We had even, not many years earlier, gone on a trip to Cotton’s native haunts, so vividly evoked in his verse. Izaak Walton, his closest friend, as well as his collaborator, used to stay with him and said of the place: ‘the pleasantness of the river, mountains and meadows about it cannot be described; unless Sir Philip Sidney, or Mr Cotton’s father were alive again to do it.’ The day started fresh and cloudy. As we drove over the hills, my father pointed out distant valleys where he had once hunted. We passed the white rails of racecourses curving in shallow ellipse on the edge of market towns and he told stories of famous upsets and broken collarbones. He wore the landscape with the familiarity of his tattered sheepskin.
It was Cotton’s fishing-lodge we were after; the house itself had been pulled down. But above the fireplace in ‘my poor fishing-house, my seat’s best grace’, we would be able to see carved the initials of Cotton and Walton and above the door ‘Piscatoribus Sacrum 1674’. It was a pilgrimage worth making. We strolled along the scarcely untrodden ways beside the Derbyshire Dove. From time to time, we met walking parties with bulging rucksacks. My father said they reminded him of hikers in Germany before the war and look what became of them. He was restless and dry after the long drive. Even if there had been a pub nestling in the mossy verdure, it would not have been open. Water gurgled down the ferny clefts in the limestone and trickled across the path in zigzags down to the noisy river. As we ducked under overhanging alders, we dislodged miniature showers from the leaves. The air was already damp; it soon thickened into a drizzle and then into a curtain of water. Our macs were treacherously permeable. We tried sheltering under a rocky overhang, but the water dripped off the underside with the persistence of an embryo stalactite. Our gullets were the only dry places for miles around.
The situation was grim, going on desperate. Any moment now, I would find myself saying ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink’ and my father would be correcting me ‘nor any drop to drink’. This was almost his favourite mis-quotation, second only to ‘human kind cannot bear too much reality’ which provoked him to say ‘very much reality—it’s obvious that nobody could bear too much,’ though if in the mood I might argue that you could have too much of something without being unable to tolerate it, drink, for example. The point remained debatable. Meanwhile, we were dry and getting soaked.
Round the next bend the path reached a place where a by-road crossed the river. At the side of the road, there was a cottage surrounded by dripping trees. On the patch of lawn leading down to the river were some chairs upended for protection from the rain and two or three green tin tables with folded sunshades stuck through a hole in the middle. A badly painted sign said TEAS. Underneath, a rusty black-and-yellow disc nailed to the wall proclaimed the endorsement of the Cyclists Touring Club. A family in plastic macs were clustered around the window of the lean-to at the back. The window was open only a few inches at the bottom so that the leader of the party had to bend down and twist his head to make himself heard in what looked like the kitchen.
‘. . . toilets.’
‘This is not a public convenience.’ The voice of the unseen proprietor was slurred but resonant.
‘Be reasonable, squire.’
‘This is a teahouse.’
‘My little girl has—’
‘She should have throught of it earlier. Look, tell you what I’ll do. I’ll charge you five bob a go.’
‘You can’t charge more than a penny. I know the law.’
‘There’s no law which says your little girl can piss in my house.’
‘There’s no need to talk dirty.’
‘Why can’t she go in the trees?’
‘My little girl’s been properly brought up.’
‘In that case, my lavatory is no place for her. Thing is, you’re creating a bloody awful draught.’
The window was slammed shut. The party in plastic macs huddled together for a minute, exhaling their outrage on the sodden air before withdrawing to consider their next move. My father went up to the window and rapped on it hard. There was a great groan from inside. The window was thrown up as high as it could go and a vast red face was thrust out, filling the entire frame.
‘Who the hell do you—’
‘You were damn rude to those—’
‘Harry.’
‘Frogmore. I thought that voice was familiar.’
My father clasped the enormous jowls with both hands. The face broke into a smile the size of a pillar-box.
‘Wait a minute.’ The head withdrew again. In due course a short man waddled towards us out of the back door. His belly reared up from his knees. He wore an open-necked shirt, considerably singed across the chest. His face glistened with sweat.
‘Sorry to be so unmannerly. Thing is, I’ve had a mountain of washing-up to do, and Louise hasn’t been feeling too good.’
‘I find washing-up broadens the mind,’ my father said. ‘Sink’s the only place where you have time to think.’
‘Not when you’ve got a hundred bloody cups and saucers to finish before the next lot. Stiffens your finger-joints, that’s all it does. Louise!’ He bellowed back at the house.
A crumpled face appeared at an upper window.
‘Don’t shout. I’ve got another migraine.’
‘Come down, these are friends, not customers. This is Harry Cotton and his boy. That’s my wife Louise. She’s French.’
‘I remember.’
‘You remember?’ He looked surprised, then nettled. ‘I didn’t know you knew her. I knew Tom Dunbabin knew her. But I didn’t know you knew her.’
‘You introduced us once.’
‘Good, good.’ He seemed relieved.
‘Extraordinary luck coming across you like this.’
‘Yes, tremendous. Come in out of the rain and have a drink before the mob get here, though on a day like this . . .’
‘I knew we’d get a drink somewhere,’ my father said.
We went into the kitchen. There were plates, cups and saucers stacked everywhere. It was hard to tell which had been washed. On the draining-board stood a half-empty bottle of whisky. Frogmore took three cups and poured a generous helping into each.
‘Rather short of glasses, I’m afraid. This is the nerve-centre of the operation. If the sun’s out and it’s a weekend, we serve a hundred teas in a day.’
‘A hundred teas.’
‘A hundred bloody teas. A hundred fucking teas. Think of that now.’ He banged his fist down on the draining-board, making the crockery jump.
My father and I sat at the table in the middle of the room, emptying our cups, rapidly. Froggie came and leant over us, the corner of the table swamped by his paunch.
‘Thing is, I hate them. Louise hates them too. But I hate them more.’
‘What’s that, chéri? Where’s the booze?’
Louise looked much less crumpled at ground level. She had tidied herself up. She jangled slightly as she walked—bracelets or earrings presumably but I couldn’t see because her shirt was frilly at neck and cuffs. Froggie introduced her again and then quickly turned away to pour her a drink. He had the air of someone who had lit the blue touch paper and was now retiring.
‘You must be the same age as my son. Do you know my son?’
‘I didn’t know you had a son, Froggie,’ my father said.
‘Very nice boy,’ said Froggie.
‘He’s not your son, chéri.’
‘Louise.’
‘Only by law. He bears your name. But he is not your son.’ She talked to him as to a schoolboy who has forgotten his lesson.
‘For Christ’s sake, what does it matter? I took him on when I married you, didn’t I?’
‘We must be honest. If everyone was honest with each other, there would be no more wars, don’t you agree?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘Don’t be so timid. You must not be timid. Englishmen are always timid. Timid and hypocritical.’
‘Not always,’ I said, trying to prove her wrong.
‘Always. Now I’m different, chéri. I speak my mind. My trouble is that I just cannot help telling the truth. And the truth is that my son is not Froggie’s son. He is the son of a very dear friend of mine, the only man I ever really loved.’
‘You don’t: mean—’
‘You would not even know his name. He was a great philosopher. He died just before my son was born.’
‘Not Tom Dunbabin?’
‘You knew him?’ She did not appear pleased.
‘He was a great friend. In fact, he’s indirectly the reason why we’re here. Aldous and I are looking for Charles Cotton’s fishing-house and it was Tom who first put me on to Cotton because he thought we might be descended from him.’
‘Ancestors. That is all you English think about.’
‘In fact he was a poet.’
‘A poet? Ah, that is different. I’m crazy about poetry. Tell me some of his poetry, chéri.’
‘Well, there was one verse that I remember Tom was very fond of:
‘A night of good drinking
Is worth a year’s thinking,
There’s nothing that kills us so surely as sorrow;
Then to drown our cares, Boys,
Let’s drink up the stars, Boys,
Each face of the gang will a sun be tomorrow.’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t call that poetry,’ Louise said.
‘More of a drinking song really,’ Froggie said nervously.
‘It is very fine verse,’ said my father.
‘I liked parts of it,’ Froggie said. ‘A night of good drinking is worth a year’s thinking. That’s good stuff.’
‘What do you know about poetry? You are just an old soak.’
‘Thing is, Harry likes it.’
‘What does he know about poetry either?’
‘He says Tom liked it too.’
‘He did not know Tommy like I knew him.’
‘That would be difficult.’
‘Tommy had soul and spirit.’
‘And spirits.’
‘God, if you knew how bored I am of your stupid jokes.’
‘I would prefer it if you did not insult me in front of my friends.’
‘Your friends. You have no friends.’
‘Harry is a very old friend.’
‘So old that you haven’t seen him once since we were married.’
‘I met Froggie in Ireland once.’ My father said. ‘During the war. He was C.L.’s racing manager then. By the way, whatever became of that?’
Froggie turned from refilling the cups to launch a ferocious kick at the ceiling. ‘What do you think, old boy? The B-O-O-T, of course.’
‘You see, he cannot keep a job,’ said Louise. ‘It was a good job too, that one. But do you know how long ago that was? Fifteen years ago. You call that friendship?’
‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ Froggie said. ‘We used to ride races together, Harry and I. Once we nearly rode Ampersand, or rather one of us nearly did. It was a question of who was the lighter.’
‘You have no friends now,’ said Louise. ‘He is not a friend now. He is here by chance.’
‘I did ride Ampersand,’ my father said.
‘No, no, you never rode him,’ said Froggie with a vehemence I had not expected. ‘Thing is, you were going to ride him. But you never did, because C.L. changed her bloody mind at the last moment, as usual.’
‘I didn’t ride him in the race. But I schooled him the morning before. That’s when I rode him.’
‘No, no, you nearly did. That’s the whole point.’
‘You have no friends at all,’ said Louise. ‘You have not seen him since the war.’
‘I rode that horse.’
‘I know the feeling, Harry. You dream something so often you begin to think it actually happened. Like the Prince Regent telling everyone he fought at Waterloo—do I mean the Prince Regent?’
‘For God’s sake, I’m telling you, I did ride the horse.’
‘What the hell are you two arguing about?’ Louise got up to pour herself another drink. The bangles chinked against the cup.
‘We’re not arguing,’ said Froggie. ‘We’re just having a friendly talk about old times.’
‘If you’re such old friends, why are you shouting at each other?’
‘The privilege of friendship. It shows what old friends we are.’
‘I rode Ampersand,’ my father said.
‘Christ, don’t go on about it. Don’t flog a dead horse.’
‘I didn’t flog him. It was like sitting in an armchair.’
‘Shall we drop the whole argument?’
‘You can’t argue about questions of fact,’ my father said.
‘All right, if that’s what you want to think, you go on thinking it.’
‘If this is your oldest friend, I dread to think what your enemies must be like,’ said Louise.
‘The rain’s stopped,’ I said. But the water was still dripping on to Froggie’s cracked lino from the hem of my mac. It was the old navy-blue gaberdine with the despicable buckle, the one that had long since ceased to be fully waterproof. Friendship was no more reliably proof against oblivion. Time—ubiquitous, corrosive, unrelenting—permeated its fabric, crept in at the seams, rusted the metal buckle. Nothing was to be depended upon.
Perhaps my father never had ridden the horse. Perhaps all his stories which so lightened my days were not quite fantasies but incidents that had just failed to happen, not invented but improved. Perhaps Ampersand had never existed. No, there were records, but that was all. I had read of some ancient civilization whose only surviving documentary traces were stone tablets giving the chariot-racing results. The Assyrians was it? Probably not.
We got up to go. My father invited Froggie and Louise to walk on with us towards Cotton’s fishing-lodge. They said they were too busy, but we must drop in again whenever we were passing by. We said we would, and they must do the same whenever they were down in our part of the world.
