The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER SIX

In accordance with my usual custom I arranged to spend Christmas with my Uncle Henry and Aunt Rose at Notting Hill.

On the 20th December I was up early to give Haggard, my gardener, his final instructions concerning the care of my poultry, and towards midday I took my bag and drove to the station with a cheerful heart. I always enjoyed my Christmas week in London and this year, for obvious reasons, I had looked forward more keenly than ever to my annual diversion.

And we were promised a really old-fashioned Christmas. The unsettled weather had turned to snow and I journeyed to London over a lovely mantle of whiteness.

At Waterloo Junction there was a scene to warm the heart. A train had just arrived with a load of happy, excited children returning home for the Christmas holidays, and nothing in the world compares with that joyful medley of parents, porters, pigtailed girls and straw-hatted boys all struggling with luggage and shouting eager enquiries about home. I saw behind every little group the vision of a snug house upon the borders of London that would presently resound with the happy voices that were echoing into the roof of the great railway station. Usually I look on at such a scene with a wistful loneliness, but today a pleasant incident occurred that drew me into the turmoil and made me for the moment a genuine part of it.

As I walked down the platform towards the barrier I nearly collided with Colonel Parker, who lives at The Manor House opposite to me across the valley at home. With him was a tall boy of about sixteen whom I recognised as his young nephew Robin.

My retired life had never brought me into close touch with Colonel Parker, whose interests lay mostly in the country gentleman’s pursuits of hunting and fishing and the like, but whenever I had met him in the village or upon the downs he had always greeted me with a friendly smile. Since early childhood his nephew and niece had lived with him – their father, a Major in the Indian Army, having been killed upon the North-West Frontier, and their mother, I understood, having died when Robin was born.

I had watched the boy and girl grow up: I had seen them galloping across the downs with a contemptuous disregard for their necks, and I had always admired them for their abundant gaiety and vigour.

I had not actually spoken to either of the children until this moment, and as Colonel Parker called out a cheery ‘Hullo!’ he introduced the boy, who had grown so much since I had last seen him that I scarcely recognised him.

‘Where are you off to?’ asked the Colonel. ‘Deserting the village for Christmas?’

I explained my customary visit to my aunt and uncle.

‘D’you know my nephew Robin?’ enquired the Colonel, and I found myself looking into a pair of clear, friendly eyes that in later days I was to know so well, and under conditions so terribly different from this gay Christmas homecoming.

‘How d’you do, sir!’ said the boy.

‘Pat – my niece – arrives at Paddington at five,’ said the Colonel. ‘She’s one of those undergraduettes at Oxford. We’re just going to dump the luggage and get some lunch. Then Robin wants to see a picture called The Black Pirate – sounds awful to me! Well – so long! Happy Christmas!’

‘Happy Christmas!’ called the boy.

‘Happy Christmas!’ I called back – and they were lost in the crowd. That scrappy, hectic little meeting pleased me. For a moment I, too, had belonged to it all and I hoped the people around us thought that I was an ‘uncle’. It may sound a little absurd, but as I walked through the crowd I glanced anxiously to right and left. I wanted people to believe that I, too, was searching for a nephew or a niece, a son or a daughter.

By the time I had arrived at Notting Hill the menace of the past months had faded completely into the background. I refused to believe, as I sat lunching with my aunt and uncle in their cosy dining-room, that anything could possibly go wrong with the earth while people as permanent as Uncle Henry and Aunt Rose lived upon it.

They were a delightful old couple: connoisseurs of happiness, and we used to revel in the Christmas Pantomimes like three overgrown children. Uncle Henry was in comfortable circumstances and had been retired from the Office of Works for several years.

During his prime he did much to add dignity and decorum to the public spaces of London, and it was through his untiring endeavours that the hands which pointed to the public conveniences in Hyde Park had a short length of sleeve and white cuffs painted onto their naked wrists. Aunt Rose had grown stout in recent years, but she possessed the finest collection in England of old coloured prints of stage-coaches that had overturned in snowdrifts.

Clemnestria, their house at Notting Hill, stood upon high ground and from the library window on the first floor one enjoyed a lovely panorama of London at night. It was romantic and fairylike to look over that stardust of twinkling lights into the heart of Theatreland, especially when one sat there for a last moment, sipping one’s port, clad in evening dress and preparing to plunge into that warm, friendly whirlpool of gaiety.

Immediately after lunch I departed for the City upon a mission that I had been considering for a long time. I went to see my stockbroker concerning my investments, and lest my motives should appear mercenary I will explain the underlying facts of the matter.

The day after the scientific societies were secretly informed of the approaching calamity there had been a sharp fall in the stock markets. Government securities had lost three or four points and nearly all industrial shares had weakened.

The reason given in the City was the approach of Christmas and the liquidation of funds to pay Income Tax in the New Year, but I am convinced that many scientists and others who knew about the approaching disaster were selling out their stocks and shares to enjoy their money while they could.

It did not appeal to me to sell my securities and spend my last days in a debauch of senseless extravagance, but I did feel I could do something that would benefit me very greatly in the event of the moon only ‘grazing’ the earth and giving it a severe shaking without actually destroying it.

I am not by nature a business man, but I think I hit upon a clever idea. I gave the most careful consideration to the lists of Stock Exchange securities and came to the conclusion that the company that would benefit most definitely by a collision with the moon would be Wigglesworth & Smirkin, the big manufacturers of china crockery.

The more I thought about it the more interesting my scheme became. I would sell £2,000 of my Great Western Railway Stock and buy 4,000 shares in Wigglesworth & Smirkin which were 10s each. The railways were certain to be shaken to pieces and their shares would become useless, but Wigglesworth & Smirkin would suddenly find themselves called upon to supply new cups and saucers, plates and dishes to everybody in England. A collision with the moon would cause an enormous breakage of china: my shares would soar sky-high and I should make a fortune.

My stockbroker lectured me upon the danger of selling first-class Debenture Stock in exchange for shares in a company that was by no means flourishing, but I laughed up my sleeve at his ignorance.

‘Is it my money or yours?’ I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and did as he was bid.

I left the City feeling that at last I had been able to do something really constructive and entered into my Christmas shopping with a light heart. For my housekeeper, Mrs Buller, I bought a neat little alarm clock; to the Vicar’s wife I sent a calendar, and for the Vicar himself I purchased a copy of The Poultry Breeder’s Annual, hoping that it would excite his interest and make him more interesting to talk to.

The conquering spirit of Christmas had thrown a dreamlike unreality over the future, and as I walked with that crowd of people along Regent Street I felt that such an irresistible tide of happiness must surely triumph over the gloomy prophecy of science and send the moon reeling back in shame to its appointed place in the heavens.

Only once was the pitiless horror of it thrust back upon me. I was passing Hamley’s toyshop, and the lights shone full upon the faces of three children, dragging their father and mother to a fascinating display of model engines. I caught one glimpse of those faces, young and old – I saw them brimming with the best that life can give – I pictured their return to some quiet house in a tree-lined road – the children climbing upon chairs to decorate the picture-frames with evergreen from the garden – the future blazing golden from a log fire – and I quivered with impotent rage… this monstrous thing could not happen in a world that harboured people such as these.

I went on my way with a leaden heart, but happy to know that at least a fragment of joy was left to that little family – if only a month – if only this one magic evening of glittering shops.

And as I boarded the bus for Notting Hill I caught one glimpse of the thin crescent of the fateful December moon. I saw it as I took my seat… I saw it over my left shoulder, and through the glass…

We had a delightfully boisterous Christmas dinner at Clemnestria. Several friends came in with their children and we played quite ridiculous old-fashioned games. The snow was falling softly outside. We played ‘Postman’s Knock’, ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ and ‘Consequences’. The children were sent home at ten o’clock and as I stood upon the doorstep to see them off I almost expected to see Father Christmas come jingling through the snow to bear them home in his sleigh.

On Boxing Day I went with my uncle and aunt to see the Pantomime at Drury Lane with Sidney and Jessie Philpotts. The Philpotts were old friends of my family, Jessie being distantly related to my aunt. Sidney was an analyst with the Metropolitan Water Board and although he had once played chess for Hertfordshire, he was quite a modest, unassuming fellow.

Jessie, however, always offended me a little at theatres, for being over-anxious to show her sense of humour she did not laugh while the rest were laughing, but waited and laughed heartily by herself when everybody else had finished in order that none should doubt that she had seen the joke. But she was a good-natured soul and it was a wonderful evening – an evening that is enshrined in my memory because it was the last – the very last upon which I heard carefree laughter around me. I have heard laughter since, but it has been the laughter of heroism or the laughter of insanity.

I can shut my eyes and see that great theatre on Boxing Night of 1945 – I can see those serried ranks of happy faces. Those mighty gusts of laughter eddy through the arid years and bring a lump to my throat that nearly overwhelms me.

For it was in this very room in which I write – this ruined, mould-stenched room of darkness and broken furniture – that I dined that night before leaving for the Pantomime.

The table was softly lit by a dozen candles under charming amber shades (if only I had but one of those candles now!): the maids moved quietly in the shadows by the wall, serving hors d’œuvres that lay in neat glass dishes upon a silver-crested tray – serving a cool hock in amber glasses: a finely cooked chicken with mushrooms… it tortures me to write these words, yet somehow it squeezes those sweet memories to a flicker of life… life that I hunger for… life that is gone for ever…

We laughed until our sides ached at that last Pantomime at Drury Lane: every song was encored and the final curtain did not fall until almost midnight.

My uncle had hired a car for the occasion, but knowing from our journey to the theatre how uncomfortably crowded it was with five persons in it, I insisted upon walking part of the way home and picking up a taxi at Piccadilly Circus.

Jessie Philpotts called out ‘behave yourself!’ as she climbed into the car and although her husband exclaimed ‘Jessie, dear!’ I did not resent the pleasantry, with its implied suggestion that I was a dark horse when left alone.

It was the loveliest night imaginable. A crisp frost lay underfoot and the rooftops glistened with the fine sparkle of snow that had fallen in the afternoon. All along the Strand went merrymakers, singing together, arm in arm, and people were gushing from the theatres amidst a chorus of hooting taxis. The whole scene was intoxicating, and I lingered amidst it, reluctant to end a delightful evening.

It is strange how the things which we visualise as happening in a hundred different ways so often discover in the end a totally unexpected means of surprising us. Upon that hilarious Boxing Night my mind had never been so far removed from the horror of the future – then suddenly I turned a corner and it was upon me – upon me in all its stark, staring reality.

I turned the corner from the blaring gaiety of the Strand and entered the broad quietness of Trafalgar Square. I decided to cut straight across the Square, to walk up Haymarket and find my taxi in Piccadilly.

The Square was almost deserted, but my attention was drawn to a silent little group beneath the Nelson Column… an incongruous little group of a dozen people drawn together in the common bond of curiosity. There were a couple of ragged wayfarers, on their journey, no doubt, to a night’s rest in the sanctuary of St Martin’s; two or three ordinary-looking men, who may have been clerks on their way to night duty; a messenger boy and some people in evening dress. And all were silently staring into the sky.

I stared up with them. Heaven knows I should have expected what I saw, and yet of all that group I must have been the most surprised and horrified. For the past week the snowladen clouds had permitted the moon to grow to its full in secret – and here it was, blazening its awful message to the earth at last.

No longer was it the flat, silver disc that man had known since man began to live. It was a ball – a great shining ball whose centre seemed nearer to us than its rim. It was no longer set firmly in the sky: it had broken loose from its time-rusted moorings in the heavens and seemed to hover in quivering uncertainty between sky and earth.

It was not appreciably larger in size, but its old familiar face had gone and in its place were those craters of awe-inspiring beauty that until now the telescope alone had revealed.

I think the silence of that little group was more torturing than the sight above me. Here stood humanity – facing at last its awful test, and it neither moved nor spoke. I had to speak… I had to make some sound to break that uncanny stillness. I turned to one of the unshaven men beside me.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

He turned a pair of dull, hollow eyes towards me and jerked his head upwards.

‘Ask yourself,’ he said.

There was no more to say. Presently the little group began to disperse. A man in evening dress buttoned his coat and relit his cigar.

‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Come on, Joan. It’s late.’

A girl slipped her arm through his and they walked away.

From the surrounding streets came the sound of singing. Big Ben, down by the river, began to strike the hour of midnight; cars purred around the Square, and I walked on alone.

At the corner of Pall Mall and Haymarket a policeman on point duty paused from his work and stared into the sky. A taxi hooted and he waved it on: he was upon earth, at work again.

I sat huddled in the taxi that drove me westward towards my uncle’s house in Notting Hill. The secret was out. It was no longer my secret. It belonged to the world.