The Gale of the World Page 5

  I still have my job in the City, but shall retire in three years, meanwhile something must be done about looking after Father, who is asking all the time to be allowed to go home. The doctor says he is old and his mind is wandering. I don’t accept this, for when we are alone he is normal, though as you know a very neurotic man. As you are the head of the family now, at least actively the head, I think you should come at once and discuss the matter with me at your very earliest convenience. I know you don’t like me, but this is a case of duty, I hope and trust you will realise.

  Your sister (whether you like it or not)

  Elizabeth.

  P.S. Doris can’t come, she is still teaching, or rather a headmistress in Cross Aulton, she chose to go there because our dear Mother was, as you know, born there. Please be a sport and help.

  He telephoned Laura, he would be away for the night, and why. If she saw Piers would she tell him. A telegram to his sister. Then away in the Silver Eagle, which had been standing under a plane tree opposite the club, to Hammersmith and the Great West Road to Staines, making for the New Forest.

  He had been going a couple of hours when, at a village before Ringwood a butcher boy on a bicycle swerved into the front of the car, touched a wing, and fell clear; but the front wheel of the bike was crushed. One rusty spoke had pierced the cracked wall of the near front tyre. Air was hissing out. New tyres were still unobtainable, except by permit; the spare wheel, fitted into the offside wing, had long since been stolen. He rolled the wheel by hand to the nearest garage, three miles away, and when it was mended, back again. This delayed him four hours. It was twilight when he reached Drakenford, to hear from a neighbour that Elizabeth had gone to the nursing home to await his arrival there. Did the neighbour know the name of the home? The woman shook her head. It was ten o’clock when Elizabeth appeared, on the last ’bus. She was querulous from lack of food.

  “I’ve been twice to meet the London train! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming anyway? No, I didn’t get any telegram!”

  There was a notice in the letter-box that a telegram could not be delivered, so it awaited collection in the village post office; which was then shut.

  “I hope you’ve brought your own food! We’re not like farmers, you know, we’re still rationed!”

  “Perhaps we can go into the town, and get supper?”

  “What, at this time of night? The place will be all closed up!”

  “I’ll put up at the Railway Inn.”

  “Yes, and leave me all alone in an empty cottage!”

  “Shall I try to get some bread and cheese at the pub?”

  “It’s closed. Why didn’t you come earlier?”

  “I’m afraid a puncture delayed me.” They went into the cottage. It had electric light.

  She made some tea. “I’m afraid there’s no sugar. Father’s ration card is at the nursing home.”

  “I never have sugar in tea, thanks.”

  They talked about the situation; and he proposed that he pay her £150 a year for life, the amount of her pension-to-be, if she left the office to look after their father.

  “But he’ll need two trained nurses, and none are available! There aren’t enough to go round. And they’ll want someone to cook and clean for them. I’ve been into all that. I can’t do it all by myself, how can I? He’ll need constant attention!”

  “What is the matter with him?”

  “Didn’t you know? His prostrate gland has been removed.”

  “Was it cancer?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. But he’s old, he’s over eighty, and senile. He won’t be able to contain his water. I couldn’t possibly look after him!”

  “But he has some capital, why can’t he live on that? And surely a good parish nurse can come in once a day?”

  “He’s afraid that if that’s all the help he has, they’ll soon have him in an old people’s home, which means the Infirmary. He dreads that. No, he expects me to look after him, and it’s too much for me. And as I said, there’s a shortage of trained nurses around here. The district is full of retired business people, so all doctors, dentists and nurses find themselves overworked. And you know what a stickler he is for having things done properly. Matron says he’s always complaining, so they take little notice of him, having other things to do. Then there’s that girl he had in his house, Myra, he calls her, she comes and wants to see him, but they won’t let her in. Quite right, too, she’s only after what she can get. Silly old man, he thinks she’s in love with him, he wants to marry her, can you believe it! Of course it’s old age, he’s gaga! Isn’t that what they call it?” she said, suddenly laughing.

  “I think I’ll go to bed, Elizabeth, if you don’t mind. Have you done with the newspaper?”

  “I never read them, they’re left here for Father. Anyway, you can’t read in bed. Electricity is rationed. It’s the same everywhere today. Well, how are you? You never write, so I’ve not the slightest idea of how you are or what you’re doing. But you never did care about your family, did you? Father thinks you’re ashamed of us. Anyway, I’ll show you to your room.”

  If only he had bought a candle. Or the dark lantern Father had given him.

  *

  To make a fresh start, Phillip had made over to a trust all proceeds of the farm sale—nearly twelve thousand pounds—together with the copyrights of his books. The royalties from the books were small, under one hundred pounds a year. His publisher had told him that his public had gone, owing to his views on the war and also because he had ‘burned up’ his children upon the farm, that is, had made them work so hard that the eldest boy had run away. Then he had taken the second boy, aged sixteen, away from school to replace his brother. These things, the publisher declared, were generally known, and had lost him his reading public. Therefore, he was sorry to say, he had decided not to accept Phillip’s autobiography, with regret for what he could only describe as the misuse of a splendid talent.

  Phillip had four hundred pounds, his motorcar and his typewriter. He would start again. All income from the trust, paid to Lucy, was not enough to pay boarding school fees for Peter, Roz, David and Jonny. Another six hundred a year was required. He had hopes from The New Horizon. Now, lying in bed, he wondered if he could look after his father as well as write and edit the magazine. It would mean keeping regular hours, and a strict schedule. His thoughts returned to Laura. Perhaps the three of them, in his father’s cottage? No, it wouldn’t work. Also, he mustn’t get involved with her. Lost girl with lost man would mean—disaster. Two stars, each needing a satellite to reflect its light, leaving lonely orbits to conjoin. Explosion. Darkness. No, he mustn’t involve Laura. That lost girl blazing with her own chaos, must not conjoin in orbit with a lost old man. He must start his novel at once. He thought of ‘Buster’, living near him on Exmoor. He would have a friend. Now to think about the first novel of his series.

  General Mihailovitch’s last words, before being shot in front of one of his daughters—a Communist; the father a Fascist, grey-bearded, manacle’d. I and all my works were caught in the gale of the world. The hail of bullets cutting bone and flesh. O fortunatus tu, mon general! If only I had died of my wounds on the Somme. Morbid thoughts no good. Breathe in slowly; as slowly respire; twenty times.

  ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’

  *

  A few miles away, in Bournemouth, Richard was lying in bed, groaning to himself as he thought that he was going to die, that his daughter intended that he should die, now that he had signed the new will in her favour. Why didn’t she come? Where was the nurse? He had rung the bell once, and again after waiting five minutes exactly, by his watch. He had said to himself, five minutes, in order to make himself ring again. He was afraid of the nurse. She had complained that he was fussy, just because he had asked for his roll of lavatory paper to be returned. He wouldn’t have to ring for her if only she would let him get out of the bed to sit on the commode. It was spite, that was it, pure spite! He was quite capable
of attending to his own motions, and of removing the apparatus for urination. O, why hadn’t Elizabeth engaged the two nurses, it would only be for a month at most, and would cost well under a hundred pounds. Life afterwards would be fairly comfortable, only he would have to regulate his intake, as the doctors called it, of liquids.

  For a week Elizabeth had been living in his cottage, and had come to see him only twice in that period, after the will had been signed. Everything to her, everything! A simple will, revoking all other wills, including the last one, leaving all to Phillip. Now, according to Elizabeth, Phillip was being divorced, and for cruelty. What could have happened? When he had seen him with Lucy, and her brother and his wife, during the war—a visit as unexpected as it was delightful—they had seemed to be the best of friends. Ah, well, one can never tell. Cruelty, too. Phillip had always been a wild boy, but never cruel.

  Ah! No! Had he not pushed little Mavis in the nursery fire, when he was not yet three years old? He had grown up to be a little coward, going round with his bully boy, urging him to fight for him! There was that boy in the Backfield, what was his name —never mind, his father had come up from Randiswell later in the afternoon, with his boy whose face was covered in blood and his nose swollen. Phillip had said it was because Mavis had been lying in the long grass of the Backfield with the boy. So Phillip had only been protecting her honour. The whole thing was disgraceful, Hetty said there was no harm in it at all, the boy was very shy—and so he had hidden himself, beside Mavis, in the long grass!

  His sigh ended in a groan. Mavis had turned against him ever afterwards, and used her second name, Elizabeth. Ah, the christening, his dear little daughter, his best girl! And then to behave like that, and hardly having reached the age of twelve! It was as though it happened yesterday. That was the point when he had found himself alone in his own house. Hetty and the children taking sides against him. Work, work, work for the family—and what had been his reward—to be regarded as an ogre in his own home.

  His thought returned to little Myra. She had written him such a loving letter before his operation, and again when he was back in his room. And the two letters, kept under his pillow, had gone! Then his talisman had been taken from him: his lavatory paper roll! Had Myra been to call at the home? You could not trust that Matron. She was almost brutally rude, refusing to listen to his just complaint that no-one came when he rang the bell for a bed-pan, and saying abruptly that it was against the rules for patients after abdominal operations to use the commode ‘on their own’. An uneducated woman: ‘to use the commode’ was sufficient. How else would one use a commode? While anyone else, and most certainly a woman, was in the room?

  Richard was in pain. Sometimes the pain arose up like a great tooth-ache and at times the pain came in waves. It was after the doctor had given him injections of penicillin. And spots had broken out all over his legs and chest, followed by throbbing headaches. The doctor said it was the penicillin fighting an infection, and had given him another dose, with worse headaches, and vomiting, to follow. And his lavatory roll, kept hidden halfway down the bed, had been taken away. His sheet-anchor! Almost his only friend, a comforter during the sleepless hours of the night. For then in an emergency he could use the commode, and not disgrace himself. As he had when at boarding school, by wetting the bed. And been caned every time that happened, in school at Slough. Still, he had been only a bit of a boy, no doubt it was done for the best.

  And now the same terror was with him in the dark hours of the night.

  Even sunlight through the window had no power to help him now.

  Voices along the corridor. No-one, he told himself, was coming to see him. No-one. Indeed, he did not want to see anyone. Certainly not Miss Myra! He was of no more use to her. No more tea parties, with his weekly ration of boiled egg, four minutes precisely, given to her, and also his sweet-meat ration. He did not want anyone to visit him. If only he had died when the Zeppelin bomb had blown him across the road, his clothes and beard covered with powdered glass. So Master Phillip, according to Elizabeth, was planning to write a family chronicle, was he? And, no doubt satirize his own people, as Thomas Morland had done in The Crouchend Saga! Would he write that he had not allowed his children to see their grandfather? Oh no—Master Phillip would not show himself up like that!

  Footfalls along the corridor. Not for him. The footfalls would go past, and a good thing too.

  Tap on door. A voice, who could it be. “May I come in?” and a face peering.

  “Who is it, pray?”

  “Phillip, Father!”

  “Well, this is a surprise, I must say!”

  “Glad to see you looking well, Father. The flowers are from a friend of yours I met outside, Myra. I remembered her from my visit to you during the war. She asked me to give them to you with her love.”

  “Oh did she now!” Richard felt a glow of hope. So little Myra did care after all! He lay back, and sighed with happiness, his eyes closed; then drew a deep breath, smiled at Phillip, and the weak voice, hollow and reedy said, “How kind of you to come to see me, old man.”

  I must make another will, with something for Myra. Phillip should have the family plate, and other lares et penates, whatever happened. Oh, if Myra would marry me! For that was Richard’s dream. In the young girl’s company the cark and care of the years fell away, as a London plane tree shed its sooty bark every year with the rising of the sap. Other men had re-married at his age, and even given their young wives children. Was there not the great Coke of Norfolk, made a widower when he was over eighty, who had married a young girl of eighteen and lived to raise another large family, and die at the age of one hundred and ten?

  “What did you think of little Myra, old chap?”

  “I like her, Father. She’s as pretty as she’s intelligent.”

  Poor Father. Shrunken arms, drawn face, thin white beard, scraggy neck, blue eyes almost faded of colour. Was he dying?

  “Have you seen your sister Elizabeth?”

  “Yes. I stayed in your cottage last night.”

  “Am I going home, Phillip?”

  “She did say something about getting a nurse, Father.”

  “Thank God!”

  Richard lay back on the pillow, looking less haggard. He breathed deeply, respiring as slowly, and smiled at his son. “So I’m going home at last,” he said. He raised himself on an elbow. The room had lost its menace. The Michaelmas daisies suddenly took on a deeper mauve colour.

  “I wonder if they came from my garden, old chap. Perhaps Elizabeth asked Myra to bring them. But I suppose you would not know.”

  “I’ll come down and see you and Elizabeth, Father, if I may, from time to time. You will forgive me if I don’t stay this time very long, won’t you? I’ve got to get back to London before dark. My battery is rather dud, it’s gone all through the war, and you can’t buy new ones yet.”

  “Well, don’t let me detain you, old man. Oh, before I forget, did you see Matron downstairs, before you came up?”

  “I walked straight in, Father. Your friend Myra told me the number of your room.”

  “Well, I must warn you that the matron here is not always in a pleasant mood, Phillip. So if she says anything about me, take it with a grain of salt, old man.”

  Matron was waiting in the hall. “Who let you up?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t see anyone here, and knowing my father’s room number, I walked up, Matron.”

  “Well, don’t do it again, if you please. I am in charge of the patients here, and Mr. Maddison is on a restricted diet, and so I hope you did not bring in any food for him?”

  “No.”

  “I would have warned you, had you rung the bell—the notice is prominently displayed on the board there!—that your father is mentally deranged, and any complaints he may have made should be taken with a grain of salt.”

  “I understand from my sister that he suffered only from an enlarged prostate, and that has been put right, Matron.”

  “
He’s over eighty and has delusions, which are not unusual at his age.”

  “What sort of delusions are they?”

  “He keeps asking for some young girl he says has promised to marry him, when she’s older. Why, it’s positively indecent!” she cried; a short woman, imprisoned within fourteen stone of muscle, bone, fat and offal, held within a grey uniform in places nearly bursting, after half a century’s stuffing with the wrong foods. “Why she is barely sixteen! I won’t let her into my Home, not likely!”

  “Is it his delusion that he is having penicillin, Matron?”

  “Dr. Manassa is treating him with penicillin, yes, but that will not arrest the deterioration of his mind.”

  “Is he well enough to go home, do you consider?”

  “That’s for the doctor to say, Mr. Maddison.”

  Phillip got the address of Dr. Manassa. He lived in a mock-Tudor house, of the style built in the early ’twenties, standing in grounds of about an acre, set with flowering and other shrubs. Seeing no-one about the front door, Phillip went round to the kitchen where he saw an elderly short man with nicotine-stained moustache washing out a bottle. He asked if he were Doctor Manassa, and the man shouted, “What the bloody hell are you doing at my kitchen door? Go round to the front and ring the bell if you want to see me!”

  This Phillip did, and waited awhile. The door was drab with cracked and blistered paint, the brass knocker and letter-box flap dull with a greenish tinge. Obviously the doctor was overworked in a town full of elderly retired people, and so an incipient spirit of Belsen prevailed about the nursing home. It was the war, which had brought exhaustion and excess everywhere. And criminals to an almost honoured position. How many thousand French shopkeepers had been murdered, their entire stock looted for the black market, and a note Il fut collaborateur beside the body? Veritably a cads’ war, a war of the spiritually damaged.