The Gale of the World Page 6

  “Sir, I am Mr. Maddison’s son.”

  “Oh well, that’s a different matter. There are a lot of bloody thieves in this town now, and how was I to know you weren’t a decoy to keep me talking while others entered my house and pinched what they could? You can sell old rope now.”

  “I am sorry, I am a writer, not a totter. How ill is my father?”

  “He didn’t let me know he was ill until complications set in. After the operation he got out of bed when the nurse’s back was turned and picked up an infection. I’m giving him penicillin. Some people are alergic to penicillin as you may know, but it was either that or the infection spreading. If he had come to me two years ago, it might have made things easier. But he’s turned eighty, and there’s not much more can be done.”

  Phillip went back to the nursing home. Richard turned imploring eyes to his son standing by the bed, but managed to keep his feelings back sufficiently to ask how his grand-children were.

  “Very well, Father.”

  “I never knew them, you know. Ah well. I knew Billy, of course, what a bright little boy he was. He’s quite a man, now, I suppose.”

  “He was killed in the war, Father.”

  “Billy? Killed? Oh dear! I didn’t know. Oh dear!” The voice more reedy, fretted away. The old man lay back, weak eyes closed, tears dripping. Then he managed to say, “Elizabeth tells me you and Lucy have parted. Is that so? Oh well.”

  “We are still friends, Father. She’ll feel free without me. You know, I think we men demand too much from our wives. I’m afraid I’ve disturbed you. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, what is done is done, I suppose.” Richard sighed inaudibly, and murmured, “Well, I did my best, and now I begin to see I failed. Oh well, my father and mother fell out, now history repeats itself.” He half-sat up, levering himself on elbows that revealed forearms almost all yellow skin. His eyes seemed larger. “Don’t bother about me any further, old chap! I’m a goner, and I know it. But Billy—he was such a bright little chap. We used to play chess of an evening. Very good he was, too. I’ll miss Billy,” he murmured, lying back with his mouth open.

  The son put a hand on the father’s forehead. God help this poor lost father of mine. I ought to stay with him, Laura. What will you think if I do not return this night? Might we look after him together?

  And Lucy, he must see her on the morrow. My poor father. Are you watching by us now, Mother, as you in a dream saw Grannie waiting to take Hughie away, when he died when I was a boy? And Father mocked your tears, when you told us at breakfast that you knew your brother was dead, and we three children sat silent at the table.

  His father seemed to be sleeping. Phillip crept out of the room. As he was closing the door he heard his father utter a deep prolonged groan of despair. He went back to the bedside. Richard’s eyes were open.

  “Father, I know it’s no consolation, but think of Billy, he and his crew had to bail out over the Alps, and Billy was held by his parachute on a crag, and frozen to death. Your grandson was a brave boy, Father.”

  Richard turned his face to the wall, and Phillip heard what were to be the last words from his father.

  “I begin to see you are against me too, are you? Well, you must be on your way—I must not keep you.”

  FATHER DIED THIS MORNING

  FUNERAL FRIDAY ELIZABETH

  Chapter 5

  GOTHIC INTERLUDE

  Michaelmas Law Sitting of the Court of Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce. Gothic arches of black, acid-eaten stone. Everything, animate and inanimate suffers ruin; changes; dies. Corridors dim with musty smell. The writing room. People sitting at little tables, some with solicitors. Men in neat suits, women subdued, pairs of hands clenched, one dabbing eyes with twisted handkerchief. Save for the orderliness it might have been an Aid Post in some church after an air-raid, without blood, without dust, without rubble. Yet in spirit all was there, on the battlefield; the desperate and aggressive were now in retreat, some ruined in name—others to be, by petrifaction.

  His solicitor was approaching. “You have not changed your mind?”

  “No. My literary reputation is gone anyway. My publisher says, ‘You have lost your public’. So I shall not contest.”

  “Your wife’s solicitor tells me the Judge will hear the case in chambers before the court opens. At nine o’clock reporters won’t be here, so there should be no publicity.”

  “Shall I be able to see her afterwards?”

  “It’s not altogether advisable. Judge Aaronson is fairly hot on anything that looks like collusion.”

  When the solicitor had left, Phillip wandered about in the hope of seeing Lucy. He would raise his hat and smile, no more. Where was chambers? The robing room behind the Court? It was five minutes to nine.

  The man called ‘Buster’, now in plain clothes, was standing by a table, listening to be-wigged Counsel with his solicitor. Replies in monosyllables, lips hardly moving, he looked straight ahead, sometimes nodding. When the barrister went away, brief bag slung over shoulder, followed by the solicitor, he remained standing there, looking neither to left nor right. Phillip went over to him and said good-morning.

  “Good-morning to you, sir.”

  “Laura told me you are writing a book.” A lame enough remark; stupid; verging on the personal.

  “Well, I’m trying my ’prentice hand at biography. The trouble is I find words a little difficult. Well, how are you? We’re all in the melting pot, I suppose. The old forms are gone.”

  “It was the same in nineteen nineteen.”

  “History repeating itself, what?”

  Phillip felt foolish. He had obtruded on another, who might well be in pain, mental and physical. He was about to make an excuse to go away when Lord Cloudesley turned to him and said,

  “After the politicians have killed off the soldiers, what next? We’ll be run by heroes of the New Statesmen. Then God help us all.” His impassivity broke, he flashed a sudden grin, gentlemen into fox. He brushed up his moustaches, as he had done at the bar of the Medicean after putting a pint pot under his nose.

  “I believe that you have written somewhere that Hess, when he flew over in nineteen forty one, fell among thieves. Do you still agree? Not that I’m all that struck on ‘the old Hun’ as he was respectfully called in my father’s day, but I don’t find myself standing with the politicians in this matter. If we are out for justice, why did we sit with the Russians? They should be in the dock, too. There are eighteen million slaves working in Russian labour camps, sixteen hours a day. They talk of ‘genocide’, but what about the massacres of Polish officers in Katyn forest?”

  The speaker again brushed up his moustaches, while looking casually around the room by moving his head in sections, as it were: examining first one section then another, then a third and a fourth, as though descending under a parachute. “Surveying the form what?”

  “Or the formlessness.”

  “Ah, yes.” The glance was no longer guarded, the eyes impersonal; there was sadness, friendliness, gentleness in the glance. There was communication. “I must look you up when you return to Exmoor, Maddison. We must foregather.” He appeared to be searching again, then turning to Phillip he said, “It is probably a foolish question, but do you happen to know anyone who has a four-and-a-half-litre supercharged Bentley cylinder block for sale?”

  “I can think only of a certain maltings on the coast of North Norfolk, in a village where some of the Bentley boys had their workshop. It was the headquarters of one of the Le Mans team who died of burns, after his motorcar had crashed in a race.”

  “I know who you mean, and I know the village. Thank you so much. I’ll do a recce there, and let you know if I have any luck. Well, I think it’s about time I did my drill in order to retain some semblance of what I’m supposed to say. God bless.”

  *

  Lucy in chambers. Dark grey coat and skirt, her one hoarded pair of black silk stockings, black shoes, small close-fitting hat of black straw with gr
ey goose feather to match her eyes.

  “Pray come forward, Mrs. Maddison.” Lucy swore on the Bible. “Now, learned Counsel, will you be so good as to proceed.”

  It was the young barrister’s first brief.

  “M’Lord, I have the honour to represent this lady. Mrs. Maddison—”

  Lucy heard it all as from another world—even her voice seemed to be coming from far away—Skirr Farm and the division in her husband’s mind, deepened by his inability to forget his first wife—yes, she died in childbirth, and he was really a writer, but was always trying to help other people—yes, she was afraid it was usually to the disadvantage of, well, himself and therefore of those near him. Yes, he had given up sleeping with her. Lucy blushed, hesitated, sought for words that would not hurt him too much, well yes, there was someone else. At Flumen Monachorum, yes. Yes, she had condoned the adultery. Flumen Monachorum, yes happy sometimes, yes, she was made to feel apart.

  “Why did you condone the adultery? Were you greatly unhappy at this intrusion of another woman in your home? Tell his Lordship.”

  “I tried to conceal it.” Should she say, “My lord”?

  “Why did you conceal your distaste at the intrusion?”

  “For the sake of his happiness, my lord.”

  “Pray continue with your questions, Mr. Strangeways.”

  “Thank you, m’lud. Now Mrs. Maddison, I must, with regret, ask you if there was any issue from this liaison with your husband and this woman.”

  “You mean issue in the sense of a child or children, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “Yes, m’lud. I understand that there was one child, Mrs. Maddison?”

  “Yes.” Lucy breathed deeply, and told the truth. “I thought a child would be good for her, she was unhappy at the idea of not having it. My husband,” said Lucy blushing again, “was the direct means of the child being born.”

  “Does that mean that he wanted the child, to acknowledge it as the father? Pray tell his Lordship.”

  “He didn’t want it to grow up feeling without a father, I think, my lord,” faltered Lucy.

  “And did he bring his child into his household with you, Mrs. Maddison?”

  “Only when he was a grown boy, my lord. It was on the farm we had in East Anglia, so that he should know his brothers and sisters.”

  “Did the mother come too?” interposed Counsel. “Reply to his Lordship.”

  “No, my lord. She had married, and lived in another district.”

  “I see,” said the judge, making a note. “Now Mr. Strangeways, may we come to the evidence of your case for cruelty, if you find you can present the case within the short time that remains with us before we go into Court.”

  More and more irritable as the war went on; moody; constantly complaining that she was hindering his life; spoiling it by her presence; until the neighbours had to close their windows to avoid hearing his chronic shouting; and finally he used violence against her in the presence of the children and threatened to shoot them all and then himself, so that she began to believe that this might happen and when he was away she left home and took the younger children with her, feeling that she could not go on any longer.

  Lucy’s face was pale, almost sallow, when the judge asked, “And has the plaintive remained apart from her husband, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “M’lud, my client wishes to ask for the discretion of your Lordship—”

  “Does that mean the discretion of the Court, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “With great respect, Yes, m’lud, in that my client returned to her husband, but did not share the matrimonial bed, because the farm had declined, with the ending of the war, to a standstill.”

  “What is the connection between sharing a matrimonial bed and a farm which has come to a standstill?”

  “M’lud, with all respect due to the Court, I am trying to establish the point that both the farm and the matrimonial bed had come to a standstill. After the war the farm was sold, and a trust made for my client and her children. The husband then departed, and has paid only a couple of visits since.”

  “To the farm which had come to a standstill, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “My client’s spouse, m’lud, included in the trust a house elsewhere, but has not shared the matrimonial home for a year and more.”

  “Where does your husband live?” the judge asked Lucy.

  “On Exmoor, my lord.”

  “Does he write to you?”

  “Yes, he does, my lord.”

  “Has he shown violence towards you since giving up the farm, during the two visits he has made to your new home?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Where is your new home?”

  “In Suffolk, my lord.”

  “And he is supporting you, and the children, by the income from the trust he made in your favour, and that of the children?”

  “He also sends extra money, from his writing, my lord.”

  “Is he living with anyone else, any other woman on Exmoor?”

  “My lord, with great respect, I was coming to that point.”

  “I have already come to it, Mr. Strangeways. Perhaps you will be good enough not to interrupt any remarks from this direction. Now, Mrs. Maddison. Is your husband living with another woman?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s only a tumbledown shepherd’s hut, my lord.”

  “Does he live there alone?”

  “Yes.”

  The judge made notes. “Pray proceed, Mr. Strangeways.”

  “M’lud, I have here several letters which he wrote to my client’s brother, a Mr. Timothy Copleston.”

  “He, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “The husband under discussion, m’lord.”

  “I am not aware of any discussion, Mr. Strangeways.”

  “Yes, m’lud. I mean no, m’lud.”

  “Make up your mind, Mr. Strangeways.”

  “Thank you, m’lud. Well, as I was saying, or attempting to say, with the greatest respect, m’lud.”

  “That is better, Mr. Strangeways.”

  “Yes, m’lud. I have here several letters which my client’s husband wrote to his wife’s brother, who reveals a morbid frame of mind—or rather, the letters reveal the morbid frame of mind, in that they virtually disclose—”

  “What is the distinction between virtually disclosing a morbid frame of mind and revealing a morbid frame of mind, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “In this case, m’lud, it is my intention to prove cruelty arising from a morbid condition of mind, in that the writer of the letters, my client’s husband, clearly reveals sympathy with the fate of one of our late enemies of the first rank, Hitler’s Deputy, Rudolf Hess, and has declared in the letter that Hess flew to England on an angelic impulse.”

  A British-born Jew, the judge looked severe. “Mr. Strangeways, you have introduced, indeed you have strayed from your argument into political propaganda which does the plaintiffs case no real service. I have heard what you have had to say, and although this case comes before me in the nature of an uncontested case I am bound to say that your argument for alienation by cruelty has not been established.”

  The judge bowed to Lucy. “In the circumstances, Mrs. Maddison, I must dismiss your plea because, from what I have heard, there is no case. I understand that your husband has suitably provided for your support and that of your children, by this means showing that he is not without regard for your joint welfare. I will go further, and say that he has shown concern for your welfare. It has been a difficult war, the world is strewn with the wreckage of human hopes and ambitions, and before I leave you, as I must immediately, I must remark that I have perceived a feeling of loyalty remaining in you for your husband’s well-being. May you come together again as a family, to the easement and happiness of yourselves and particularly of your children.”

  *

  Phillip saw Lucy leaving chambers, and followed at what Tim would have described as a discreet distance. Phillip had written to Lucy’s brother, giving him permission t
o use his letters in any way he, Tim, thought fit; thus to allow himself not to feel critical of Tim for what, among some men, would have been considered to be a breach of confidence. After all, Tim’s Pa had been an old man when Tim was born, and Tim was only twelve when his mother had died, leaving Tim and Pa alone in Down Close. Lucy was seventeen, and had left school at once to go home and look after ‘the two poors’, as she thought of them when she saw them, standing side by side, looking entirely lost, by the garden gate, watching for her. It was in 1917, during the war in which many of her cousins had been killed. Seven years later she had met Phillip, and his little motherless son, also ‘two poors’, and from a deep compassionate nature decided to look after them—if he wanted her, as he seemed, at first, to do.

  Lucy walked slower, but Phillip did not catch up with her. Doubt suddenly appalled her. Supposing he had wanted, after all, to be free of her? Perhaps he could divorce her for cruelty, she had, in a way, caused him to suffer by not trying harder to understand the things he wanted to talk about with her, Wagner and other composers and authors like Dostoieffsky and all those war books. That was mental cruelty, but not allowed in divorce. Oh dear, she had let him down again. What would he think of her?

  She stopped, and moved to one side to be out of the way of people hurrying past. She saw he had stopped, too. So, summoning up resolution she walked towards him, feeling the dreaded colour coming into her face, and smiling nervously, but maintaining her fortitude. He was looking as though he hadn’t seen her when she stopped by him.

  “I haven’t seen you,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Every peeler, bluebottle, copper, bogey or slop is an agent of the King’s Proctor. Maintain a stiff upper lip, harden your eyes, be remote. Like me!” he said, turning to her with a smile. “I’m awfully sorry to have put you to all this inconvenience, but in six months you should be entirely free of me, when your decree nisi is made absolute. Why do you look so sad?”