The Kindly Ones

3

EVERY CHRISTMAS, as I have said, Albert used to send my mother a letter drafted in a bold, sloping, dowager’s hand, the mauve ink of the broad nib-strokes sinking deep, spreading, into the porous surface of the thick, creamy writing paper with scalloped edge. He had kept that up for years. This missive, composed in the tone of a dispatch from a distant outpost of empire, would contain a detailed account of his recent life, state of health, plans for the future. Albert expressed himself well on paper, with careful formality. In addition to these annual letters, he would, every three or four years, pay my mother a visit on his ‘day off’. These visits became rarer as he grew older. During the twenty-five years or so after we left Stonehurst, I saw him on such occasions twice, perhaps three times; one of these meetings was soon after the war, when I was still a schoolboy; another, just before ‘coming down’ from the university. Perhaps there was a third. I cannot be sure. Certainly, at our last encounter, I remember thinking Albert remarkably unchanged from Stonehurst days: fatter, undeniably, though on the whole additional flesh suited him. He had now settled down to be a fat man, with the professional fat man’s privileges and far from negligible status in life. He still supported a chronic weariness of spirit with an irony quite brutal in its unvarnished view of things. His dark-blue suit, assumed ceremonially for the call, gave him a rather distinguished appearance, brown canvas, rubber-soled shoes temporarily substituted for the traditional felt slippers (which one pictured as never renovated or renewed), adding a seedy, nearly sinister touch. He could have passed for a depressed, incurably indolent member of some royal house (there was a look of Prince Theodoric) in hopeless exile. The ‘girl from Bristol’ had taken him in hand, no doubt bullied him a bit, at the same time arranged a life in general tolerable for both of them. She had caused him to find employment in hotels where good wages were paid, good cooking relatively appreciated. There were two children, a boy and a girl. Albert himself was never greatly interested in either of them, while admitting they ‘meant a lot’ to his wife. It had been largely with a view to the children’s health and education that she had at last decided on moving to a seaside town (the resort, as it happened, where Moreland had once conducted the municipal orchestra), when opportunity was offered there to undertake the management of a small ‘private hotel’. Albert was, in principle, to do the cooking, his wife look after the housekeeping. It was a species of retirement, reflecting the ‘girl from Bristol’s’ energetic spirit.

To this establishment — which was called the Bellevue — Uncle Giles inevitably gravitated. Even if he had never heard of Albert, Uncle Giles would probably have turned up there sooner or later. His life was spent in such places — the Ufford, his pied-à-terre in Bayswater, the prototype — a phenomenal number of which must have housed him at one time or another throughout different parts of the United Kingdom.

‘Battered caravanserais,’ Uncle Giles used to say. ‘That’s what a fellow I met on board ship used to call the pubs he stayed in. From Omar Khayyam, you know. Not a bad name for ’em. Well-read man in his way. Wrote for the papers. Bit of a bounder. Stingy, too. Won the ship’s sweep and nobody saw a halfpenny back in hospitality.’

The position of Albert at the Bellevue offered a family connexion not to be disregarded, one to support a reasonable demand for that special treatment always felt by Uncle Giles to be unjustly denied him by fate and the malign efforts of ‘people who want to push themselves to the front’. Besides, the Bellevue offered a precinct where he could grumble to his heart’s content about his own family to someone who knew them personally. That was a rare treat. In addition, when Uncle Giles next saw any members of his family, he could equally grumble about Albert, complaining that his cooking had deteriorated, his manners become ‘offhand’. Uncle Giles did not visit the Bellevue often. Probably Albert, who had his own vicissitudes of temperament to contend with, did not care — family connexion or no family connexion — to accommodate so cantankerous a client there too frequently. He may have made intermittent excuses that the hotel was full to capacity. Whatever the reason, these occasional sojourns at the Bellevue were spaced out, for the most part, between Uncle Giles’s recurrent changes of employment, which grew no less frequent with the years. He continued to enjoy irritating his relations.

‘I like the little man they’ve got in Germany now,’ he would remark, quite casually.

This view, apparently so perverse in the light of Uncle Giles’s often declared radical principles, was in a measure the logical consequence of them. Dating to some extent from the post-war period, when to support Germany against France was the mark of liberal opinion, it had somehow merged with his approval of all action inimical to established institutions. National Socialism represented revolution; to that extent the movement gained the support, at any rate temporary support, of Uncle Giles. Besides, he shared Hitler’s sense of personal persecution, conviction that the world was against him. This was in marked contrast to the feeling of my brother-in-law, Erridge, also a declared enemy of established institutions, who devoted much of his energies to assisting propaganda against current German policies. Erridge, however, in his drift away from orthodox Communism after his own experiences in Spain, had become an increasingly keen ‘pacifist’, so that he was, in practice, as unwilling to oppose Germany by force of arms as Uncle Giles himself.

‘We don’t want guns,’ Erridge used to say. ‘We want to make the League of Nations effective.’

The death of the Tollands’ stepmother, Lady Warminster, a year or two before, with the consequent closing down of Hyde Park Gardens as an establishment, caused a re-grouping of the members of the Tolland family who had lived there. This had indirectly affected Erridge, not as a rule greatly concerned with the lives of his brothers and sisters. When Lady Warminster’s household came to an end, Blanche, Robert and Hugo Tolland had to find somewhere else to live, a major physical upheaval for them. Even for the rest of the family, Lady Warminster’s death snapped a link with the past that set the state of childhood at a further perspective, forced her stepchildren to look at life in rather a different manner. Ties with their stepmother, on the whole affectionate, had never been close in her lifetime. Death emphasised their comparative strength: Norah Tolland, especially, who had never ‘got on’ very well with Lady Warminster, now losing no opportunity of asserting — with truth — that she had possessed splendid qualities. Although widow of two relatively rich men, Lady Warminster left little or no money of her own. There were some small bequests to relations, friends and servants. Blanche Tolland received the residue. She had always been the favourite of her stepmother, who may have felt that Blanche’s ‘dottiness’ required all financial support available. However, when the point of departure came, Blanche’s future posed no problem. Erridge suggested she should keep house for him at Thrubworth. His butler, Smith, had also died at about that moment — ‘in rather horrible circumstances’, Erridge wrote — and he had decided that he needed a woman’s help in running the place.

‘Smith is the second butler Erry has killed under him,’ said Norah. ‘You’d better take care, Blanchie.’

Since his brief adventure with Mona, Erridge had shown no further sign of wanting to marry, even to associate himself with another woman at all intimately. That may have been partly because his health had never wholly recovered from the dysentery incurred in Spain: another reason why his sister’s care was required. This poor state of health Erridge — always tending to hypochondria — now seemed to welcome, perhaps feeling that to become as speedily as possible a chronic invalid would be some insurance against the need to take a decision in the insoluble problem of how to behave if hostilities with Germany were to break out.

‘I have become a sick man,’ he used to say, on the rare occasions when any of his family visited Thrubworth. ‘I don’t know at all how long I am going to last.’

Robert Tolland had lived in his stepmother’s house, partly through laziness, partly from an ingrained taste for economy; at least those were the reasons attributed by his brothers and sisters. At her death, Robert took a series of small flats on his own, accommodation he constantly changed, so that often no one knew in the least where he was to be found. In short, Robert’s life became more mysterious than ever. Hitherto, he had been seen from time to time at Hyde Park Gardens Sunday luncheon-parties; now, except for a chance glimpse at a theatre or a picture gallery, he disappeared from sight entirely, personal relationship with him in general reduced to an occasional telephone call. Hugo Tolland, the youngest brother, also passed irretrievably into a world of his own. He continued to be rather successful as assistant to Mrs Baldwyn Hodges in her second-hand furniture and decorating business, where, one afternoon, he sold a set of ormolu candlesticks to Max Pilgrim, the pianist and cabaret entertainer, who was moving into a new flat. When Hyde Park Gardens closed down, Hugo announced that he was going to share this flat. There was even a suggestion — since engagements of the kind in which he had made his name were less available than formerly — that Pilgrim might put some money into Mrs Baldwyn Hodges’s firm and himself join the business.

Among her small bequests, Lady Warminster left her sister, Molly Jeavons, the marquetry cabinet in which she kept the material for her books, those rambling, unreviewed, though not entirely unreadable, historical studies of dominating women. The Maria Theresa manuscript, last of these biographies upon which she had worked, remained uncompleted, because Lady Warminster admitted — expressing the matter, of course, in her own impenetrably oblique manner — she had taken a sudden dislike to the Empress on reading for the first time of her heartless treatment of prostitutes. Although they used to see relatively little of each other, Molly Jeavons was greatly distressed at her sister’s death. No greater contrast could be imagined than the staid, even rather despondent atmosphere of Hyde Park Gardens, and the devastating muddle and hustle of the Jeavons house in South Kensington, but it was mistaken to suppose these antitheses precisely reproduced the opposing characters of the two sisters. Lady Warminster had a side that took pleasure in the tumbledown aspects of life: journeys to obscure fortune-tellers in the suburbs, visits out of season to dowdy seaside hotels. It was, indeed, remarkable that she had never found her way to the Bellevue. Molly Jeavons, on the other hand, might pass her days happily enough with a husband as broken down, as unemployable, as untailored, as Ted Jeavons, while she ran a kind of free hotel for her relations, a rest-home for cats, dogs and other animals that could impose themselves on her good nature; Molly, too, was capable of enjoying other sides of life. She had had occasional bursts of magnificence as Marchioness of Sleaford, whatever her first marriage may have lacked in other respects.

‘The first year they were married,’ Chips Lovell said, ‘the local Hunt Ball was held at Dogdene. Molly, aged eighteen or nineteen, livened up the proceedings by wearing the Sleaford tiara — which I doubt if Aunt Alice has ever so much as tried on — and the necklace belonging to Tippoo Sahib that Uncle Geoffrey’s grandfather bought for his Spanish mistress when he outbid Lord Hertford on that famous occasion.’

For some reason there was a great deal of fuss about moving the marquetry cabinet from Hyde Park Gardens to South Kensington. The reason for these difficulties was obscure, although it was true that not an inch remained in the Jeavons house for the accommodation of an additional piece of furniture.

‘Looks as if I shall have to push the thing round myself on a barrow,’ said Jeavons, speaking gloomily of this problem.

Then, one day in the summer after ‘Munich’, when German pressure on Poland was at its height, Uncle Giles died too — quite suddenly of a stroke — while staying at the Bellevuc.

‘Awkward to the end,’ my father said, ‘though I suppose one should not speak in that way.’

It was certainly an inconvenient moment to choose. During the year that had almost passed since Isobel and I had stayed with the Morelands, everyday life had become increasingly concerned with preparations for war: expansion of the services, air-raid precautions, the problems of evacuation; no one talked of anything else. My father, in poor health after being invalided out of the army a dozen years before (indirect result of the wound incurred in Mesopotamia), already racked with worry by the well-justified fear that he would be unfit for re-employment if war came, was at that moment in no state to oversee his brother’s cremation. I found myself charged with that duty. There was, indeed, no one else to do the job. By universal consent, Uncle Giles was to be cremated, rather than buried. In the first place, no specially apposite spot awaited his coffin; in the second, a crematorium was at hand in the town where he died. Possibly another feeling, too, though unspoken, influenced that decision: a feeling that fire was the element appropriate to his obsequies, the funeral pyre traditional to the nomad.

I travelled down to the seaside town in the afternoon. Isobel was not feeling well. She was starting a baby. Circumstances were not ideal for a pregnancy. Apart from unsettled international conditions, the weather was hot, too hot. I felt jumpy, irritable. In short, to be forced to undertake this journey in order to dispose of the remains of Uncle Giles seemed the last straw in making life tedious, disagreeable, threatening, through no apparent fault of one’s own. I had never seen much of Uncle Giles, felt no more than formal regret that he was no longer among us. There seemed no justice in the fact that fate had willed this duty to fall on myself. At the same time, I had to admit things might have been worse. Albert — more probably his wife — had made preliminary arrangements for the funeral, after informing my father of Uncle Giles’s death. I should stay at the Bellevue, where I was known; where, far more important, Uncle Giles was known. He probably owed money, but there would be no uneasiness. Albert would have no fears about eventual payment. It was true that some embarrassing fact might be revealed: with Uncle Giles, to be prepared for the unexpected in some more or less disagreeable form was always advisable. Albert, burdened with few illusions on any subject, certainly possessed none about Uncle Giles; he would grasp the situation even if there were complexities. I could do what clearing up was required, attend the funeral, return the following morning. There was no real excuse for grumbling. All the same, I felt a certain faint-heartedness at the prospect of meeting Albert again after all these years, a fear — rather a base one — that he might produce embarrassing reminiscences of my own childhood. That was very contemptible. A moment’s serious thought would have shown me that nothing was less likely. Albert was interested in himself, not in other people. That did not then occur to me. My trepidation was increased by the fact that I had never yet set eyes on the ‘girl from Bristol’, of whom her husband had always painted so alarming a picture. She was called ‘Mrs Creech’, because Albert, strange as it might seem, was named ‘Albert Creech’. The suffix ‘Creech’ sounded to my ears unreal, incongruous, rather impertinent, like suddenly attaching a surname to one of the mythical figures of Miss Orchard’s stories of the gods and goddesses, or Mr Deacon’s paintings of the Hellenic scene. Albert, I thought, was like Sisyphus or Charon, one of those beings committed eternally to undesired and burdensome labours. Charon was more appropriate, since Albert had, as it were, recently ferried Uncle Giles over the Styx. I do not attempt to excuse these frivolous, perhaps rather heartless, reflections on my own part as I was carried along in the train.

On arrival, I went straight to the undertaker’s to find out what arrangements had already been made. Later, when the Bellevue hove into sight — the nautical phrase is deliberately chosen — I saw at once that, during his visits there, Uncle Giles had irrevocably imposed his own personality upon the hotel. Standing at the corner of a short, bleak, anonymous street some little way from the sea-front, this corner house, although much smaller in size, was otherwise scarcely to be distinguished from the Ufford, his London pied-a-terre. Like the Ufford, its exterior was painted battleship-grey, the angle of the building conveying just the same sense of a hopelessly unseaworthy, though less heavily built vessel, resolutely attempting to set out to sea. This foolhardy attempt of the Bellevue to court shipwreck, emphasised by the distant splash of surf, seemed somehow Uncle Giles’s fault. It was just the way he behaved himself. Perhaps I attributed too much to his powers of will. The physical surroundings of most individuals, left to their own choice, vary little wherever they happen to live. No doubt that was the explanation. I was in the presence of one of those triumphs of mind over matter, like the photographer’s power of imposing his own personal visual demands on the subject photographed. Nevertheless, even though I ought to have been prepared for a house of more or less the same sort, this miniature, shrunken version of the Ufford surprised me by its absolute consistency of type, almost as much as if the Ufford itself had at last shipped anchor and floated on the sluggish Bayswater tide to this quiet roadstead. Had the Ufford done that? Did the altered name, the new cut of jib, hint at mutiny, barratry, piracy, final revolt on the high seas — for clearly the Bellevue was only awaiting a favourable breeze to set sail — of that ship’s company of well brought up souls driven to violence at last by their unjustly straitened circumstances?

Here, at any rate, Uncle Giles had died. By the summer sea, death had claimed him, in one of his own palaces, amongst his own people, the proud, anonymous, secretive race that dwell in residential hotels. I went up the steps of the Bellevue. Inside, again on a much smaller scale, resemblance to the Ufford was repeated: the deserted hall; yellowing letters on the criss-cross ribbons of a board; a faint smell of clean sheets. Striking into the inner fastnesses of its precinct, I came suddenly upon Albert himself. He was pulling down the blinds of some windows that looked on to a sort of yard, just as if he were back putting up the shutters at Stonehurst, for it was still daylight.

‘Why, Mr Nick …’

Albert, dreadfully ashamed at being caught in this act, in case I might suppose him habitually to lend a hand about the house, began to explain at once that he was occupied in that fashion only because, on this particular evening, his wife was in bed with influenza. He did not hide that he considered her succumbing in this way to be an act of disloyalty.

‘I don’t think she’ll be up and about for another day or two,’ he said, ‘what with the news on the wireless night after night, it isn’t a very cheerful prospect.’

It was absurd to have worried about awkward adjustments where Albert was concerned. Talking to him was just as easy, just as natural, as ever. All his old fears and prejudices remained untouched by time, the Germans — scarcely more ominous — taking the place of the suffragettes. He was older, of course, what was left of his hair, grey and grizzled; fat, though not outrageously fatter than when I had last seen him; breathing a shade more heavily, if that were possible. All the same, he had never become an old man. In essential aspects, he was hardly altered at all: the same timorous, self-centred, sceptical artist-cook he had always been, with the same spirit of endurance, battling his way through life in carpet-slippers. Once the humiliation of being caught doing ‘housework’ was forgotten, he seemed pleased to see me. He launched at once into an elaborate account of Uncle Giles’s last hours, making no attempt to minimise the fearful lineaments of death. In the end, with a view to terminating this catalogue of macabre detail, which I did not at all enjoy and seemed to have continued long enough, however much pleasure the narrative might afford Albert himself in the telling, I found myself invoking the past. This seemed the only avenue of escape. I spoke of Uncle Giles’s visit to Stonehurst just before the outbreak of war. Albert was hazy about it.

‘Do you remember Bracey?’

‘Bracey?’

‘Bracey — the soldier servant.’

Albert’s face was blank for a moment; then he made a great effort of memory.

‘Little fellow with a moustache?’

‘Yes.’

‘Used to come on a bicycle?’

‘That was him.’

‘Ignorant sort of man?’

‘He had his Funny Days.’

Albert looked blank again. The phrase, once so heavy with ominous import at Stonehurst, had been completely erased from his mind.

‘Can’t recollect.’

‘Surely you must remember — when Bracey used to sulk.’

‘Did he go out with the Captain — with the Colonel, that is — when the army went abroad?’

‘He was killed at Mons.’

‘And which of us is going to keep alive, I wonder, when the next one starts?’ said Albert, dismissing, without sentiment, the passing of Bracey. ‘It won’t be long now, the way I see it. If the government takes over the Bellevue, as they looks like doing, we’ll be in a fix. Be just as bad, if we stay. They say the big guns they have nowadays will reach this place easy. They’ve come on a lot from what they was in 1914.’

‘And Billson?’ I said.

I was now determined to re-create Stonehurst, the very subject I had dreaded in the train on the way to meet Albert again. I suppose by then I had some idea of working up, by easy stages, to the famous Billson episode with General Conyers. I should certainly have liked to hear Albert’s considered judgment after all these years. Once again, he showed no sign of recognition.

‘Billson?’

‘The parlourmaid at Stonehurst.’

‘Small girl, was she — always having trouble with her teeth?’

‘No, that was another one.’

I recognised that it was no good attempting to rebuild the red tiles, the elongated façade of the bungalow. If Albert supposed Billson to be short and dark, she must have passed from his mind without leaving a trace of her own passion. That was cruel. All the same, I made a final shot.

‘You don’t remember when she gave the slice of seed-cake to the little boy from Dr Trelawney’s?’

The question struck a spark. This concluding bid to unclog the floods of memory had an immediate, a wholly unexpected effect.

‘I knew there was something else I wanted to tell you, sir,’ said Albert. ‘It just went out of my head till you reminded me. That’s the very gentleman — Dr Trelawney — been staying here quite a long time. Came through a friend of your uncle’s, a lady. I puzzled and puzzled where I’d seen him before. Captain Jenkins said something one day how Dr Trelawney had lived near Stonehurst one time. Then the name came back to me.’

‘Does he still wear a beard and take his people out running?’

‘Still got a beard,’ said Albert, ‘but he lives very quiet now. Not so young as he was, like the rest of us. Has a lot of meals in his room. Quite a bit of trouble, he is. I get worried about him now and then. So does the wife. Not too quick at settling the account. Then he does say some queer things. Not everyone in the hotel likes it. Of course, we have to have all sorts here. Can’t pick and choose. Dr Trelawney’s health ain’t all that good neither. Suffers terrible from asthma. Something awful. I get frightened when he’s got the fit on him.’

It was clear that Albert, too well-behaved to say so explicitly, would have been glad to eject Dr Trelawney from the Bellevue. That was not surprising. I longed to set eyes on the Doctor again. It would be a splendid story to tell Moreland, with whom I had been out of any close contact since we had stayed at the cottage.

‘Used my uncle to see much of Dr Trelawney?’

‘They’d pass the time of day,’ said Albert. ‘The lady knew both of them, of course. They’d sometimes all three go out together on the pier and such like. Captain Jenkins used to get riled with some of the Doctor’s talk about spirits and that. I’ve heard him say as much.’

‘Was the lady called Mrs Erdleigh?’ I asked.

Uncle Giles had once been suspected of being about to marry this fortune-telling friend of his. It was likely that she was the link between himself and Dr Trelawney.

‘That’s the name,’ said Albert. ‘Lives in the town here. Tells fortunes, so they say. Used to come here quite a lot. In fact, she rang up and offered to help after Captain Jenkins died, but I thought I’d better wait instructions. As it was, we just put all the clothing from the drawers tidy on the bed, so the things would be easy to pack. We haven’t touched the Gladstone bag. Captain Jenkins didn’t have much with him at the end. Kept most of his stuff in London, so I believe.’

Albert sniffed. He evidently held a low opinion of the Ufford.

‘I’ll just give you your uncle’s keys, sir,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I must see the wife now. She takes on if I don’t keep her informed about veg. Those silly girls never bring her what she wants neither. One of them’s having time off, extra like, old Mrs Telford persuading her to go to an ambulance class or some such. I don’t know what the young women of today are about. Making sheep’s eyes most of the time, that’s what it comes to.’

He moved off laboriously to Mrs Creech’s sick-bed. I thought the best system would be to deal with Uncle Giles’s residue straight away, then dine. The news of Dr Trelawney’s installation at the Bellevue aroused a cloud of memories. That he had not passed into oblivion like so many others Albert had met was a tribute to the Doctor’s personality. Even he would have been forgotten, if Uncle Giles had not recalled him to mind. That was strange because, as a rule, where others were concerned, Uncle Giles’s memory was scarcely more retentive than Albert’s. I wondered what life would be like lived in this largely memoryless condition. Better? Worse? Not greatly different? It was an interesting question. The reappearance of Mrs Erdleigh was also a matter of note. This fairly well known clairvoyante (whom Lady Warminster had consulted in her day) had once ‘put out the cards’ for me at the Ufford, prophesying my love affair with Jean Duport, for a time occupying so much of my life, now like an episode in another existence. Later, characteristically, Uncle Giles had pretended never to have heard of Mrs Erdleigh. However, rumours persisted at a later date to the effect that they still saw each other. There must have been a reconciliation. I wondered whether she would turn up at the funeral, what had been her relations with Uncle Giles, what with Dr Trelawney.

I had told Albert I would find my own way to the bedroom, which was some floors up. It was small, dingy, facing inland. The sea was in any case visible from the Bellevue — in spite of its name — only from the attic windows, glimpsed through a gap between two larger hotels, though the waves could be heard clattering against the shingle. Laid out on the bed were a couple of well-worn suits; three or four shirts, frayed at the cuff; half a dozen discreet, often-knotted des; darned socks (who had darned them?); handkerchiefs embroidered with the initials GDJ (who had embroidered them?); thick woollen underclothes; two pairs of pyjamas of unattractive pattern; two pairs of shoes, black and brown; bedroom slippers worthy of Albert; a raglan overcoat; a hat; an unrolled umbrella; several small boxes containing equipment such as studs and razor blades. This was what Uncle Giles had left behind him. No doubt there was more of the same sort of thing at the Ufford. The display was a shade depressing. Dust was returning to dust with dreadful speed. I looked under the bed. There lay the suitcase into which these things were to be packed, beside it, the Gladstone bag to which Albert had referred, a large example of its kind, infinitely ancient, perhaps the very one with which Uncle Giles had arrived at Stonehurst on the day of the Archduke’s assassination. I dragged these two pieces out. One of the keys on the ring committed to me by Albert fitted this primitive, shapeless survival of antique luggage, suitable for a conjuror or comedian.

At first examination, the Gladstone bag appeared to be filled with nothing but company reports. I began to go through the papers. Endless financial projects were adumbrated; gratifying prospects; inevitable losses; hopeful figures, in spite of past disappointments. The whole panorama of the money-market lay before one — as it must once have burgeoned under the eyes of Uncle Giles — like the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Hardly a venture quoted on the Stock Exchange seemed omitted; several that were not. There were two or three share certificates marked ‘valueless’ that might have been stock from the South Sea Bubble. Uncle Giles’s financial investigations had been extensive. Then a smaller envelope turned out to be something different. One of the sheets of paper contained there showed a circle with figures and symbols noted within its circumference. It was a horoscope, presumably that of Uncle Giles himself.

He had been born under Aries — the Ram — making him ambitious, impulsive, often irritable. He had secret enemies, because Saturn was in the Twelfth House. I remembered Mrs Erdleigh remarking that handicap when I met her with Uncle Giles at the Ufford. Mars and Venus were in bad aspect so far as dealings with money were concerned. However, Uncle Giles was drawn to hazards such as the company reports revealed by the conjunction of Jupiter. Moreover Jupiter, afflicting Mercury, caused people to find ‘the native’ — Uncle Giles — unreliable. That could not be denied. Certainly none of his own family would contradict the judgment. Unusual experiences with the opposite sex (I thought of Sir Magnus Donners) were given by Uranus in the Seventh House, a position at the same time unfavourable to marriage. It had to be admitted that all this gave a pretty good, if rough-and-ready, account of my uncle and his habits.

Underneath the envelope containing the horoscope was correspondence, held together by a paper-clip, with a firm of stockbrokers. Then came Uncle Giles’s pass-book. The bank statements of the previous year showed him to have been overdrawn, though somewhat better off than was commonly supposed. The whole question of Uncle Giles’s money affairs was a mysterious one, far more mysterious than anything revealed about him astrologically. Speculation as to the extent of his capital took place from time to time, speculation even as to whether he possessed any capital at all. The stockbroker’s letters and bank statements came to an end. The next item in the Gladstone bag appeared to be a surgical appliance of some sort. I pulled it out. The piece of tubing was for the administration of an enema. I threw the object into the wastepaper-basket, with the company reports. Below again — the whole business was like research into an excavated tomb — lay a roll of parchment tied in a bow with red tape.

‘VICTORIA by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India &c. To Our Trusty and well-beloved Giles Delahay Jenkins, Gentleman, Greeting. We, reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Loyalty, Courage and good Conduct, do by these Presents Constitute and Appoint you to be an Officer in Our Land Forces …’

Trusty and wellbeloved were not the terms in which his own kith and kin had thought of Uncle Giles for a long time now. Indeed, the Queen’s good-heartedness in herself greeting him so warmly was as touching as her error of judgment was startling. There was something positively ingenuous in singling out Uncle Giles for the repose of confidence, accepting him so wholly at his own valuation. No doubt the Queen had been badly advised in the first instance. She must have been vexed and disappointed.

‘… You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge your Duty as such in the Rank of 2nd Lieutenant or in such higher Rank as we may from time to time hereafter be pleased to promote or appoint you to …’

The Queen’s faith in human nature appeared boundless for, extraordinary as the royal whim might seem, she had indeed been pleased to appoint Uncle Giles to a higher rank, instead of quietly — and far more wisely — dispensing with his services at the very first available opportunity. Perhaps such an opportunity had not arisen so immediately as might have been expected; perhaps Uncle Giles had assumed the higher rank without reference to the Queen. Certainly he was always styled ‘Captain’ Jenkins, so that there must have been at least a presumption of a once held captaincy of some sort, however ‘temporary’, ‘acting’ or ‘local’ that rank might in practice have been. No doubt her reliance would have been lessened by the knowledge that Mercury was afflicting Jupiter at the hour of Uncle Giles’s birth.

‘… and you are at all times to exercise and well discipline in Arms both the inferior Officers and Men serving under you and use your best endeavours to keep them in good Order and Discipline. And we do hereby command them to Obey you as their superior Officer … according to the Rules and Discipline of War, in pursuance of the Trust hereby reposed in you …’

The great rolling phrases, so compelling in their beauty and simplicity, might be thought inadmissible for the most heedless, the most cynical, to disregard, so moderate, so obviously right in the circumstances, were their requirements, so friendly — even to the point of intimacy — the manner in which the Sovereign outlined the principles of her honourable service. Uncle Giles, it must be agreed, had not risen to the occasion. So far as loyalty to herself was concerned, he had been heard on more than one occasion to refer to her as ‘that old Tartar at Osborne’, to express without restraint his own leanings towards a republican form of government. His Conduct, in the army or out of it, could not possibly be described as Good. In devotion to duty, for example, he could not be compared with Bracey, a man no less pursued, so far as that went, by Furies. There remained Uncle Giles’s Courage. That, so far as was known, remained untarnished, although — again so far as was known — never put to any particularly severe test. Certainly it could be urged that he had the Courage of his own opinions; the Queen had to be satisfied with that. In short, the only one of her admonitions Uncle Giles had ever shown the least sign of taking to heart was the charge to command his subordinates to obey him.

Even after his own return to civilian life, Uncle Giles tried his best to carry out this injunction in relation to all who could possibly be regarded as subordinate to him. Being ‘a bit of a radical’ never prevented that; the Sign of Aries investing him with the will to command, adding that touch of irritability of disposition as an additional spur to obedience.

While I thus considered, rather frivolously, Uncle Giles’s actual career in contrast with the ideal one envisaged by the terms of his Commission, I could not help thinking at the same time that facile irony at my uncle’s expense could go too far. No doubt irony, facile or otherwise, can often go too far. In this particular instance, for example, it was fitting to wonder what sort of a figure I should myself cut as a soldier. The question was no longer purely hypothetical, a grotesque fantasy, a romantic daydream, the career one had supposed to lie ahead as a child at Stonehurst. There was every reason to think that before long now the tenor of many persons’ lives, my own among them, would indeed be regulated by those draconic, ineluctable laws, so mildly, so all embracingly, defined in the Commission as ‘the Rules and Discipline of War’. How was it going to feel to be subject to them? My name was on the Emergency Reserve, although no one at that time knew how much, or how little, that might mean when it came to joining the army. At the back of one’s mind sounded a haunting resonance, a faint disturbing buzz, that was not far from fear.

By the time these disturbing thoughts had descended on me, I had begun to near the bottom of the Gladstone bag. There was another layer of correspondence, this time in a green cardboard file, on the subject of a taxi-cab’s collision with a lorry, an accident with regard to which Uncle Giles had been subpoenaed as witness. It went into the waste-paper-basket, a case — as Moreland would have said — in which there was ‘nothing of the spirit’. That brought an end to the contents, except for a book. This was bound in grubby vellum, the letterpress of mauve ink, like that used by Albert in his correspondence. I glanced at the highly decorated capitals of the title page:

The Perfumed Garden

of the Sheik Nefzaoui

or

The Arab Art of Love

I had often heard of this work, never, as it happened, come across a copy. Uncle Giles was an unexpected vehicle to bring it to hand. The present edition —’Cosmopoli: 1886’ — was stated to be published ‘For Private Circulation Only’, the English translation from a French version of the sixteenth-century Arabic manuscript made by a ‘Staff Officer in the French Army in Algeria’.

I pictured this French Staff Officer sitting at his desk. The sun was streaming into the room through green latticed windows of Moorish design, an oil sketch by Fromentin or J. F. Lewis. Dressed in a light-blue frogged coatee and scarlet peg-topped trousers buttoning under the boot, he wore a pointed moustache and imperial. Beside him on the table stood his shako, high and narrowing to the plume, the white puggaree falling across the scabbard of his discarded sabre. He was absolutely detached, a man who had tasted the sensual pleasures of the Second Empire and Third Republic to their dregs, indeed, come to North Africa to escape such insistent banalities. Now, he was examining their qualities and defects in absolute calm. Here, with the parched wind blowing in from the desert, he had found a kindred spirit in the Sheik Nefzaoui, to whose sixteenth-century Arabic he was determined to do justice in the language of Racine and Voltaire. Perhaps that picture was totally wide of the mark: the reality quite another one. The Staff Officer was a family man, snatching a few minutes at his beloved translation between the endearments of his wife, the rompings of a dozen children… Rimbaud’s father, perhaps, who had served in North Africa, made translations from the Arabic… The ‘Rules and Discipline of War’ must in some degree have been relaxed to allow spare time for these literary labours. Possibly he worked only on leave. I turned the pages idly. The Sheik’s tone was authoritative, absolutely self-assured — for that reason, a trifle forbidding — the chapter headings enigmatic:

‘… Concerning Praiseworthy Men … Concerning Women who deserve to be Praised … Of Matters Injurious to the Act of Generation … On the Deceits and Treacheries of Women… Concerning Sundry Observations useful to Know for Men and Women …’

On the Deceits and Treacheries of Women? The whole subject was obviously very fully covered. Sincere and scholarly, there was also something more than a little oppressive about the investigation, moments when the author seemed to labour the point, to induce a feeling of surfeit in the reader. All the same, I felt rather ashamed of my own lack of appreciation, because I could see that much of the advice was good. Disinclination to continue reading I recognised as a basic unwillingness to face facts, rather than any innate fastidiousness to be regarded as a matter for self-congratulation. I felt greatly inferior to the French Staff Officer, whatever his personal condition, who saw this severely technical sociological study, by its nature aseptic, even chilling in deliberate avoidance of false sentiment and specious charm, as a refreshing antidote to Parisian canons of sensuality.

Uncle Giles’s acquisition of this book must have been one of the minor consequences of having Uranus in the Seventh House; that was the best that could be said for him. It reminded him perhaps of ladies like the garage proprietor’s widow, manicurist at Reading, once thought to be under consideration as his future wife; possibly it was used as a handbook in those far off, careless days. In any case, there was no reason to suppose Uncle Giles to have become more straitlaced as he grew older. I put the volume aside to reconsider. There was work to be done. The clothes were packed away at last in the suitcase, the papers spared from the waste-paper basket, returned to the Gladstone bag, the two pieces of luggage placed side by side to await removal. As Albert had remarked, Uncle Giles had not left much behind, even though further items would be found at the Ufford. By that time the gong had sounded for dinner.

I took the Sheik Nefzaoui’s treatise with me to the dining-room, which was fairly full, single white-haired ladies predominating, here and there an elderly couple. No doubt the seasons made little difference to the Bellevue, the bulk of its population living there all the year round, winter and summer, solstice to solstice. I was given a table in the corner, near the hatch through which food was thrust by Albert. The table next to mine was laid for one person. Upon it stood a half-consumed bottle of whisky, a room-number pencilled on the label. I wondered whether my neighbour would turn out to be Dr Trelawney. That would provide an excitement. I hoped, in any case, that I should catch a glimpse of the Doctor before leaving the hotel, contrive some anecdote over which Moreland and I could afterwards laugh. I had nearly finished my soup — which recalled only in a muted form Albert’s ancient skill — when a tall man, about my own age or a year or two older, entered the dining-room. He strode jauntily through the doorway, looking neither to the right nor left, making straight for the table with the whisky bottle. Hope vanished of enjoying near me Dr Trelawney’s mysterious presence. This man was thin, with fair to reddish hair, pink-faced, pale eyebrows raised in an aggressive expression, as if he would welcome a row at the least provocation. He wore a country suit, somehow rather too elegant for the Bellevue’s dining-room. I experienced that immediate awareness, which can descend all of a sudden like the sky becoming overcast, of the close proximity of a person I knew and did not like, someone who made me, at the same time, in some way morally uncomfortable. For a second, I thought this impression one of those sensations of dislike as difficult to rationalise as the contrasting feeling of sudden sympathy; a moment later realising that Bob Duport was sitting next to me, that there was excuse for this onset of tingling antipathy.

I had not set eyes on Duport since I was an undergraduate, since the night, in fact, when Templer had driven us all into the ditch in his new car. A whole sequence of memories and sensations, luxuriant, tender, painful, ludicrous, wearisome, rolled up, enveloping like a fog. Moreland, as I have said, liked talking of the variations of sexual jealousy, the different effect produced by men with whom a woman has been ‘shared’.

‘Some of them hardly matter at all,’ he had said. ‘Others you can’t even bear to think about. Very mention of their name poisons the whole relationship — the whole atmosphere. Again you get to like — almost to love — certain ones, husbands or cast-off lovers, I mean. You feel dreadfully sorry for them, at least, try to make their wives or ex-mistresses behave better to them. It becomes a matter of one’s own self-respect.’

Duport, so far as I was concerned, had been a case in point. I had once loved his wife, Jean, and, although I loved her no longer, our relationship had secreted this distasteful residue, an unalterable, if hidden, tie with her ex-husband. It was a kind of retribution. I might not like the way Duport behaved, either to Jean or towards the world in general, but what I had done had made him, at least in some small degree, part of my own life. I was bound to him throughout eternity. Moreover, I was, for the same reason, in no position to be censorious. I had undermined my own critical standing. Duport’s emergence in this manner cut a savage incision across Time. Templer’s Vauxhall seemed to have crashed into the ditch only yesterday; I could almost feel my nose aching from the blow received by the sudden impact of Ena’s knee, hear Templer’s fat friend, Brent, swearing, the grinding, ghastly snorts of the expiring engine, Stringham’s sardonic comments as we clambered out of the capsized car. It had all seemed rather an adventure at the time. I reflected how dreadfully boring such an experience would be now, the very thought fatiguing. However, an immediate decision had to be taken about Duport. I made up my mind to pretend not to recognise him, although the years I had loved Jean made him horribly, unnaturally familiar to me, as if I had been seeing Duport, too, all the time I had been seeing her. Indeed, he seemed now almost more familiar than repellent.

The thought that Duport had been Jean’s husband, that she had had a child by him, that no doubt she had once loved him, had not, for some reason, greatly worried me while she and I had been close to each other. Duport had never — I cannot think why — seemed to be in competition with myself where she was concerned. For Jean to have married him, still, so to speak, to own him, although living apart, was like a bad habit (Uncle Giles poring in secret over The Perfumed Garden), no more than that; something one might prefer her to be without, to give up, nothing that could remotely affect our feeling for each other. Anyway, I thought, those days are long past; they can be considered with complete equanimity. Duport and I had met only once, fourteen or fifteen years before. He could safely be regarded as the kind of person to whom the past, certainly such a chance encounter, would mean little or nothing, in fact be completely forgotten. No doubt since then new friends of his had driven him scores of times into the ditch with new cars full of new girls. He was that sort of man. Such were my ill-judged, unfriendly, rather priggish speculations. They turned out to be hopelessly wide of the mark.

Duport’s first act on sitting down at the table was to pour out a stiffish whisky, add a splash of soda from the syphon also standing on the table, and gulp the drink down. Then he looked contemptuously round the room. Obviously my own presence had materially altered the background he expected of the dining-room at the Bellevue. He stared hard. Soup was set in front of him. I supposed he would turn to it. Instead, he continued to stare. I pretended to be engrossed with my fish. There was something of the old Albert in the sauce. Then Duport spoke. He had a hard, perfectly assured, absolutely uningratiating voice.

‘We’ve met before,’ he said.

‘Have we?’

‘Somewhere.’

‘Where could that have been?’

‘Certain of it. I can’t remember your name. Mine’s Duport — Bob.’

‘Nicholas Jenkins.’

‘Aren’t you a friend of my former brother-in-law, Peter Templer?’

‘A very old friend.’

‘And he drove us both into the ditch in some bloody fast second-hand car he had just bought. Years ago. A whole row of chaps and a couple of girls. The party included a fat swab called Brent.’

‘He did, indeed. That was where we met. Of course I remember you.’

‘I thought so. Do you ever see Peter these days?’

‘Hadn’t for ages. Then we met about a year ago — just after “Munich”, as a matter of fact.’

‘I’ve heard him talk about you. I used to be married to his sister, Jean, you know. I believe I’ve heard her speak of you, too.’

‘I met her staying with the Templers.’

‘When was that?’

‘Years ago — when I had just left school.’

‘Ever see her later?’

‘Yes, several times.’

‘Probably when she and I were living apart. That is when Jean seems to have made most of her friends.’

‘When I last saw Peter, he was talking about some new job of yours.’

I judged it best to change the subject of Jean — also remembering the talk about Duport between Sir Magnus Donners and Widmerpool. Up to then, I had thought of Duport only in an earlier incarnation, never considered the possibility of running into him again.

‘Was he, indeed? Where did you meet him?’

‘Stourwater.’

‘Did you, by God? What do you do?’

I tried to give some account, at once brief and intelligible, of the literary profession: writing; editing; reviewing; the miscellaneous odd jobs to which I was subject, never, for some reason, very easy to define to persons not themselves in that world. To my relief, Duport showed no interest whatever in such activities, apparently finding them neither eccentric nor important.

‘Shouldn’t think it brings in much dough,’ he said. ‘But how do you come to know Donners?’

‘We were taken over by some friends who live in the neighbourhood.’

‘You’re married?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you like being married?’

‘Support it all right.’

‘You’re lucky. I find it a great relief not to be married — though I was quite stuck on Jean when we were first wed. But what on earth are you doing in this dump?’

I explained about Uncle Giles, about Albert.

‘So that’s the answer,’ said Duport. ‘Of course I used to see your uncle cruising about here. Bad-tempered old fellow. Didn’t know he’d dropped off the hooks. They like to keep death quiet in places like this. Look here, when you were staying with Donners, was an absolute bugger called Widmerpool there too?’

‘Widmerpool wasn’t staying there. He just looked in. Wanted to say something about your business affairs, I think. I know Widmerpool of old.’

‘A hundred per cent bastard — word’s too good for him.’

‘I know some people think so.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘He and I rub along all right. But why are you living at the Bellevue?’

‘Keeping out of the immediate view of the more enterprising of my creditors. I only wish my stay here were going to be as brief as yours.’

‘How did you find the place?’

‘Odd chance, as a matter of fact. I once brought a girl down to the Royal for the week-end — one of those bitches you want to have and get out of your system and never set eyes on again. While we were there I made friends with the barman. He’s called Fred and a very decent sort of chap. When I found, not so long ago, that I’d better go into comparative hiding, I decided this town would be as good a place as any other to put myself out of commission for a week or two. I left my bags at the station and dropped in to the Royal bar to ask Fred the best place to make an economical stay. He sent me straight to the Bellevue.’

‘How do you like Albert?’

‘Get along with Albert, as you call him, like a house on fire — but it’s a pretty dead-and-alive hole to live in, I can tell you. It’s the sort of town where you feel hellishly randy all the time. I’ve got quite a bit of work to do in the way of sorting out my own affairs. That keeps me going during the day. But there’s nothing whatever to do in the evenings. I go to a flick sometimes. The girls are a nightmare. We’d better go out and get drunk together tonight. Make you forget about your uncle. Has he left you anything?’

‘Doubt if he’d anything to leave.’

‘Never mind. You’ll get over it. I’d like to have a talk with you about Widmerpool.’

This intermittent conversation had taken us through most of dinner. I felt scarcely more drawn to Duport than on the day we first met. He was like Peter Templer, with all sympathetic characteristics removed. There was even a slight physical resemblance between the two of them. I wondered if one of those curious, semi-incestuous instincts of attraction had brought Jean to Duport in the first place, or whether Templer and Duport had become alike by seeing a good deal of each other as brothers-in-law and in the City. Duport, I knew, suffered financial crises from time to time. For a period he would live luxuriously, then all his money would disappear. This capacity for making money, combined with inability to keep it, was mysterious to me. I had once said something of the sort to Templer, when he complained of his brother-in-law’s instability.

‘Oh, Bob knows he will be able to recoup in quite a short time,’ Templer had said. ‘Doesn’t worry him, any more than it worries you that you will be able to write the review of some book when it appears next year. You’ll have something to say, Bob’ll find a way of making money. It’s only momentary inconvenience, due to his own idiocy. It’s not making the money presents the difficulty, it’s keeping his schemes in bounds — not landing in jail.’

I could see the force of these words. They probably explained Duport’s present situation. From what Templer used to say of him — from what Jean used to say of him — I knew quite a lot of Duport. At the same time, there were other things I should not at all have minded hearing about, which only Duport could tell me. I was aware that to probe in this manner was to play with fire, that it would probably be wiser to remain in ignorance of the kind of thing which I was curious to know. However, I saw, too, there was really no escape. I was fated to spend an evening in Duport’s company. While I was about it, I might as well hear what I wanted to hear, no matter what the risk. Like Uncle Giles’s failings, all was no doubt written in the stars.

‘Where shall we go?’

‘The bar of the Royal.’

For a time we walked in silence towards the sea-front, the warm night hinting at more seductive pursuits than drinking with Duport.

‘News doesn’t look very good,’ I said. ‘Do you think the Germans are going into Poland?’

There seemed no particular object in avoiding banality from the start, as the evening showed every sign of developing into a banal one.

‘There’s bloody well going to be a war,’ said Duport, ‘you can ease your mind about that. If I’d been in South America, I’d have sweated it out there. Might in any case. Still, I suppose currency restrictions would make things difficult. I’ve always been interested in British Guiana aluminium. That might offer something. I’ll recount some of my recent adventures in regard to the international situation when we’ve had some drinks. Did you meet Peter Templer’s wife at Stourwater?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you think of her?’

‘Something’s gone a bit adrift, hasn’t it?’

‘Peter has driven her off her rocker. Nothing else. Used to be a very pretty little thing married to an oaf of a man who bored her to death.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘She was mad about Peter — still is — and he got too much of her. He always had various items on the side, of course. Then he started up with Lady Anne Something-or-Other, who is always about with Donners.’

‘Anne Umfraville.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘There was rather a scene when we were there.’

I gave a brief account of the Masque of the Seven Deadly Sins. Duport listened without interest.

‘Donners never seems to mind about other people getting off with his girls,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard it said he is a voyeur. No accounting for tastes. I don’t think Peter cares what he does now. Something of the sort may have upset Betty — though whether she herself, or Anne, was involved, you can’t say.’

‘I found Peter quietened down on the whole.’

‘Quite right. He is in a way. Used to be more cheerful in the days of the slump, when he was down the drain like the rest of us. Then he turned to, and made it all up. Very successful, I’d say. But he never recovered from it. Slowed him up for good, so far as being a pal for a night on the tiles. Prefers now to read the Financial Times over a glass of port. However, that need not apply to his private life — may have developed special tastes, just as Donners has. Very intensive womanising sometimes leads to that kind of thing, and you can’t say Peter hasn’t been intensive.’

By this time we had reached the Royal. Duport led the way to the bar. It was empty, except for the barman, a beefy, talkative fellow, who evidently knew Duport pretty well.

‘Fred will fix you up with a girl, if you want one,’ said Duport, while drinks were being poured out. ‘I don’t recommend it.’

‘Come off it, Mr Duport.’

‘You know you can, Fred. Don’t be so coy about it. Where are we going to sit? How do you feel about availing yourself of Fred’s good offices?’

‘Not tonight.’

‘Why not?’

‘Not in the mood.’

‘Sure?’

‘Certain.’

‘Don’t make a decision you’ll regret later.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Do you play poker?’

‘Not a great hand at it.’

‘Bores you?’

‘Never seem to hold a card.’

‘Golf?’

‘No.’

I felt I was not cutting a very dashing figure, even if I did not accept all this big talk about women as necessarily giving an exact picture of Duport’s own life. No doubt women played a considerable part in his existence, but at the same time he seemed over keen on making an impression on that score. He probably talked about them, I thought, more than concerning himself with incessant action in that direction. He was not at all put out that I should fall so far short of the dissipations suggested by him. All he wanted was a companion with whom to drink. Life at the Bellevue must certainly be boring enough.

‘I was going to tell you about that swine Widmerpool,’ he said.

This seemed no occasion for an outward display of loyalty to Widmerpool by taking offence at such a description. I had stated earlier that Widmerpool and I were on reasonably good terms. That would have to be sufficient. In any case, I had no illusions about Widmerpool’s behaviour. All the same, this abuse sounded ungrateful, for what I knew of their connection indicated that more than once Widmerpool had been instrumental in finding a job for Duport when hard up. It was a Widmerpool job for Duport that had finally severed me from Jean.

‘Why do you dislike Widmerpool so much?’

‘Listen to this,’ said Duport. ‘Some years ago, when I was on my uppers, Widmerpool arranged for me to buy metal ores for a firm in South America. When that was fixed, I suggested to my wife, Jean, that we might as well link up again. Rather to my surprise, she agreed. Question of the child and so on. Made things easier.’

Duport paused.

‘I’ll tell you about Jean later,’ he said. ‘The Widmerpool story first. I don’t expect you’ve ever heard of chromite?’

‘The word was being bandied about at Stourwater.’

‘Of course. I’d forgotten you’d been there at the critical moment.’

‘What was the critical moment?’

‘Donners got into his head that he would be well advised to get a foothold in the Turkish chromite market. He’d already talked to Widmerpool about it, when I arrived in London from South America. I’d left South America for reasons I’ll explain later. I found a message from Widmerpool, with whom I was of course in touch, telling me to come and see him. I went along to his office. He suggested I should push off to Turkey and buy chromite. It was for Donners-Brebner, but negotiated through a Swiss subsidiary company. What about a refill?’

We ordered some more drinks.

‘Widmerpool opened a credit for me through a Turkish bank,’ said Duport. ‘I was to buy the ores myself and send a shipment as soon as I had enough. I sent one shipment, was getting to work good and proper on the second shipment, when, a week or two ago, do you know what happened?’

‘I’m floored.’

‘Widmerpool,’ said Duport slowly, ‘without informing me, cancelled the credit. He did that on his own responsibility, because he didn’t like the look of the European situation.’

‘Can’t you apply to Donners?’

‘He is in France, doing a tour of the Maginot Line or something of the sort — making French contacts and having a bit of a holiday at the same time. I was bloody well left holding the baby. The sellers were looking to me for payments impossible for me to make. Of course I shall see Donners the moment he returns. Even if he re-opens the credit, there’s been an irreparable balls-up.’

‘And you’d go back?’

‘If the international situation allows. It may not. I’ve no quarrel with Widmerpool about the likelihood of war. I quite agree. That is why Donners wants chromite. Widmerpool seems to have missed that small point.’

‘Why does Donners specially want chromite if there’s war?’

‘Corner the Turkish market. The more there is talk of war, the more Donners-Brebner will need chromite. Donners gives out that it is for some special process he is interested in. That was why Peter Templer was asked to Stourwater — so that he would gossip afterwards about that. Not a word of truth. Donners had quite other reasons. He is not going to give away his plans to a fool like Widmerpool, even when it suits his book to use Widmerpool. Widmerpool talks a lot of balls about “reducing the firm’s commitments”. He’s missed the whole bloody point.’

I was not sure that I saw the point myself. It presumably turned on whether or not there was a war — Sir Magnus thinking there would be, Widmerpool undecided how to act if there were. All that was clear was that Duport had been put into an unenviable position.

‘So you see,’ he said, ‘Widmerpool isn’t a great favourite with me at the moment.’

‘You were going to tell me why you left South America.’

‘I was,’ said Duport, speaking as if it were a relief to abandon the subject of Widmerpool and chromite. ‘Since you know Peter Templer, did you ever meet another ex-brother-in-law of mine, Jimmy Stripling, who was married to Peter’s other sister, Babs? He used to have quite a name as a racing driver.’

‘Stripling was at the Templers’ when I stayed there years ago. I met him once since.’

‘Jimmy and Babs got a divorce. Jimmy — who has always been pretty cracked in some ways — took up with a strange lady called Mrs Erdleigh, who tells fortunes. Incidentally, she sometimes came to the Bellevue to see your uncle. I remembered her. Looks as if she kept a high-class knocking-shop. There is another queer fish living at the Bellevue — old boy with a beard. He and Mrs Erdleigh and your late lamented uncle used sometimes to have tea together.’

‘I know about Mrs Erdleigh — and Dr Trelawney too.’

‘You do? Trelawney tried to bring off a touch last time we talked. I explained I was as broke as himself. No ill feeling. That’s beside the point. Also the fact that Myra Erdleigh milked Jimmy Stripling to quite a tune. All I want to know is: what did you think of Jimmy when you met him?’

‘Pretty awful — but I never knew him well. He may be all right.’

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Duport. ‘He is awful. Couldn’t be worse. Kept out of the war himself and ran away with Babs when her husband was at the front. Double-dealing, stingy, conceited, bad tempered, half cracked. I went to him to try and get a bit of help during my last pre-South American débâcle. Not on your life. Nothing doing with Jimmy. I might have starved in the gutter for all Jimmy cared. Now, you say you knew Jean, my ex-wife?’

‘She was at Peter’s Maidenhead house once when I went there.’

‘Nice girl, didn’t you think?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Reasonably attractive?’

‘I’d certainly have said so.’

‘Wouldn’t have any difficulty in getting hold of the right sort of chap?’

‘It wouldn’t be polite to express doubt on that point, since she married you.’

I did not manage to impart all the jocularity fittingly required to give lively savour to this comment. Duport, in any case, brushed it aside as irrelevant.

‘Leave me out of it by all means,’ he said. ‘Just speaking in general, would you think Jean would have any difficulty in getting hold of a decent sort of chap? Yes or no.’

‘No.’

‘Neither should I,’ said Duport. ‘But the fact remains that she slept with Jimmy Stripling.’

I made some suitable acknowledgment, tempered, I hoped, by polite surprise. I well remembered the frightful moment when Jean herself had first informed me, quite gratuitously, of having undergone the experience to which Duport referred. I could recall even now how painful that information had been at the time, as one might remember a physical accident long passed. The matter no longer worried me, primarily because I no longer loved Jean, also because the whole Stripling question had, so to speak, been resolved between Jean and myself at the time. All the same, the incident had been a disagreeable one. That had to be admitted. One does not want to dwell on some racking visit to the dentist, however many years have rolled on since that day. Perhaps I would have preferred to have remained even then unreminded of Jean and Stripling. However, present recital could in no way affect the past. That was history.

‘Can you beat it?’

I acknowledged inability to offer a parallel instance.

‘Well, I can,’ said Duport. ‘I don’t set up as behaving particularly well myself, but, when it comes to behaving badly, women can give you a point or two every time. I just tell you about Jimmy Stripling by the way. He is not the cream of the jest. As I mentioned before, I thought things would be easier if Jean and I joined up again. I found I was wrong.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Not surprisingly, Jean had been having a bit of a run around while we were living apart,’ said Duport. ‘I suppose that was to be expected.’

I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable. So far as I knew, neither Duport, nor anyone else, had the smallest reason to guess anything of what had passed between Jean and myself. All the same, his words suggested he was aware of more than I might suppose.

‘The point turned out to be this,’ said Duport. ‘Jean only wanted to link up with me again to make things easier for herself in carrying on one of her little affairs.’

‘But how could joining up with you possibly help? Surely things were much easier when she was on her own?’

Duport did not answer that question.

‘Guess who the chap was?’ he said.

‘How could I possibly?’

‘Somebody known to you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Seen you and him at the same time.’

Duport grinned horribly. At least I guiltily thought his grin horrible, because I supposed him to be teasing me. It was unlikely, most unlikely, that Jean had told him about ourselves, although, since she had told both of us about Stripling, such a confession could not be regarded as out of the question. Perhaps someone else, unknown to us, had passed the story on to Duport. In either case, the situation was odious. I greatly regretted having agreed to come out drinking with him, even more of having encouraged him to speak of his own troubles. My curiosity had put me in this position. I had no one but myself to blame. It was just in Duport’s character, I felt, to discompose me in this manner. If he chose to make himself unpleasant about what had happened, I was in no position to object. Things would have to be brazened out. All the same, I could not understand what he meant by saying that Jean had come back to him in order to ‘make things more convenient’. Her return to her husband, their journey together to South America, had been the moment when we had been forced finally to say good-bye to each other. Since then, I had neither seen nor heard of her.

‘Just have a shot at who it was,’ said Duport, ‘bearing in mind Jimmy Stripling as the standard of what a lover should be.’

‘Did he look like Stripling?’

I felt safe, at least, in the respect that, apart from any difference in age, no two people could look less alike than Stripling and myself.

‘Even more of a lout,’ said Duport, ‘if you can believe that.’

‘In what way?’

There was a ghastly fascination in seeing how far he would go.

‘Wetter, for one thing.’

‘I give it up.’

‘Come on.’

‘No good.’

I knew I must be red in the face. By this time we had had some more drinks, to which heightened colouring might reasonably be attributed.

‘I’ll tell you.’

I nerved myself.

‘It was another Jimmy,’ said Duport. ‘Perhaps Jimmy is just a name she likes. Call a man Jimmy and she gets hot pants at once, I shouldn’t wonder. Anyway, it was Jimmy Brent.’

‘Brent?’

At first the name conveyed nothing to me.

‘The fat slob who was in the Vauxhall when Peter drove us all into the hedge. You must remember him.’

‘I do remember him now.’

Even in retrospect, this was a frightful piece of information.

‘Jimmy Brent — always being ditched by tarts in nightclubs.’

I felt as if someone had suddenly kicked my legs from under me, so that I had landed on the other side of the room, not exactly hurt, but thoroughly ruffled, with all the breath knocked out of me.

‘Nice discovery, wasn’t it?’ said Duport.

‘Had this business with Brent been going on long?’

‘Quite a month or two. Took the place of something else, I gather. In fact there was a period when she was running both at the same time. That’s what I have good reason to believe. The point was that Brent was going to South America too. It suited Jean’s book for me to buy her ticket. We all three crossed on the same boat. Then she continued to carry on with him over there.’

‘But are you sure this is true? She can’t really have been in love with Brent.’

This naïve comment might have caught the attention of someone more interested than Duport in the emotions of other people. It was, in short, a complete give-away. No one was likely to use that phrase about a woman he scarcely knew, as I had allowed Duport to suppose about Jean and myself. As it was, he merely showed justifiable contempt for my lack of grasp, no awareness that the impact of his story had struck a shower of sparks.

‘Who’s to say when a woman’s in love?’ he said.

I thought how often I had made that kind of remark myself, when other people were concerned.

‘I’ve no reason to suppose she wasn’t speaking the truth when she told me she’d slept with him,’ Duport said. ‘She informed me in bed, appropriately enough. You’re not going to tell me any woman would boast of having slept with Jimmy Brent, if she hadn’t. The same applies to Jimmy Stripling. It’s one of the characteristics the two Jimmies have in common. Both actions strike me as even odder to admit to than to do, if that was possible.’

‘I see.’

‘Nothing like facing facts when you’ve been had for a mug in a big way,’ said Duport. ‘I was thinking that this morning when I was working out some freight charges. The best one can say is that Jimmy and the third party — if there was a third party — were probably had for mugs too.’

I agreed. There was nothing like facing facts. They blew into the face hard, like a stiff, exhilarating, decidedly gritty breeze, which brought sanity with it, even though sanity might be unwelcome.

‘What made you think there was another chap too?’ I asked, from sheer lack of self-control.

‘Something Jean herself let fall.’

It is always a temptation to tell one’s own story. However, I saw that would be only to show oneself, without the least necessity, in a doubly unflattering light to someone I did not like, someone who could not, in the circumstances, reasonably be expected to be in the least sympathetic. I tried to sort out what had happened. Only a short while earlier, I had thought of myself as standing in an uneasy position vis-à-vis Duport, although at the same time a somewhat more advantageous one. Now, I saw that I, even more than he, had been made a fool of. At least Duport seemed to have begun the discord in his own married life — although, again, who can state with certainty the cause of such beginnings? — while I had supposed myself finally parting with Jean only in order that her own matrimonial situation might be patched up. That charming love affair, which had formerly seemed to drift to a close through my own ineffectiveness, had, in reality, been terminated by the deliberate manoeuvre of Jean herself for her own purposes, certainly to the detriment of my self-esteem. I thought of that grave, gothic beauty that once I had loved so much, which found fulfilment in such men. The remembered moaning in pleasure of someone once loved always haunts the memory, even when love itself is over. Perhaps, I thought, her men are gothic too, beings carved on the niches and corbels of a mediaeval cathedral to arouse at once laughter and horror. In any case, I had been one of them. If her lovers were horrifying, I too had been of their order. That had to be admitted.

‘It is no good pontificating,’ Mr Deacon used to say, ‘about other people’s sexual tastes.’

For the moment, angry, yet at the same time half inclined to laugh, I could not make up my mind what I thought. This was yet another example of the tricks that Time can play within its own folds, tricks that emphasise the insecurity of those who trust themselves over much to that treacherous concept. I suddenly found what I had regarded as immutable — the not entirely unsublime past — roughly reshaped by the rude hands of Duport. That was justice, I thought, if you like.

‘What happened after?’

‘After what?’

‘Did she marry Brent?’

Duport’s story had made me forget entirely that Templer had already told me his sister had made a second marriage.

‘Not she,’ said Duport. ‘Ditched Brent too. Can’t blame her for that. Nobody could stick Jimmy for long — either of them. She married a local Don Juan some years younger than herself — in the army. Nephew of the President. I’ve just met him. He looks like Rudolph Valentino on an off day. Change from Brent, anyway. It takes all sorts to make a lover. Probably keep her in order, I should think. More than I ever managed.’

He stretched.

‘I could do with a woman now,’ he said.

‘Why not have one of Fred’s?’

‘Fred hasn’t got what I want. Besides, it’s too late in the evening. Fred likes about an hour’s notice. You know, I’ll tell you something else, as I seem to be telling you all about my marital affairs. My wife wasn’t really much of a grind. That was why I went elsewhere. All the same, she had something. I wasn’t sorry when we started up again.’

I loathed him. I still carried with me The Perfumed Garden. Now seemed a suitable moment to seek a home for the Sheik Nefzaoui’s study. Room could no doubt be found for it in the Duport library. To present him with the book would be small, secret amends for having had a love affair with his wife, a token of gratitude for having brought home to me in so uncompromising a fashion the transitory nature of love. It would be better not to draw his attention to the chapter on the Deceits and Treacheries of Women. He could find that for himself.

‘Ever read this?’

Duport glanced at the title, then turned the pages.

‘The Arab Art of Love,’ he said. ‘Are you always armed with this sort of literature? I did not realise you meant that kind of thing when you said you reviewed books.’

‘I found it among my uncle’s things.’

‘The old devil.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘They say you’re never too old to learn.’

‘Would you like it?’

‘How much?’

‘I’ll make a present of it.’

‘Might give me a few new ideas,’ said Duport. ‘I’ll accept it as a gift. Not otherwise.’

‘It’s yours then.’

‘Got to draw your attention to the clock, Mr Duport,’ said the barman, who was beginning to tidy up in preparation for closing the bar.

‘We’re being kicked out,’ said Duport. ‘Just time for a final one.’

The bar closed. We said good night to Fred.

‘Nothing for it but go back to the Bellevue,’ said Duport. ‘I’ve got a bottle of whisky in my room.’

‘What about the pier?’

‘Shut by now.’

‘Let’s walk round by the Front.’

‘All right.’

The wind had got up by that time. The sea thudded over the breakwaters in a series of regular, dull explosions, like a cannonade of old-fashioned artillery. I felt thoroughly annoyed. We turned inland and made for the Bellevue. The front door was shut, but not locked. We were crossing the hall, when Albert came hurrying down the stairs. He was evidently dreadfully disturbed about some matter. His movements, comparatively rapid for him, indicated consternation. He was pale and breathless. When he saw us, he showed no surprise that Duport and I should have spent an evening together. Our arrival in each other’s company seemed almost expected by him, the very thing he was hoping for at that moment.

‘There’s been a proper kettle of fish,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you back, Mr Nick — and you too, Mr Duport.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Dr Trelawney.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘Gone and locked himself in the bathroom. Can’t get out. Now he’s having one of his asthma attacks. With the wife queer herself, I don’t want to get her out of bed at this time of night. I’d be glad of you gentlemen’s help. There’s no one else in the house that’s less than in their seventies and it ain’t no good asking those silly girls. I’m all that sorry to trouble you.’

‘What,’ said Duport, ‘the good Dr Trelawney, the bearded one? We’ll have him out in a trice. Lead us to him.’

This sudden crisis cheered Duport enormously. Action was what he needed. I thought of Moreland’s remarks about men of action, wondering whether Duport would qualify. This was not how I had expected to meet Dr Trelawney again. We hurried along the passages behind Albert, slip-slopping in his ancient felt slippers. There were many stairs to climb. At last we reached the bathroom door. There it became clear that the rescue of Dr Trelawney presented difficulties. In fact it was hard to know how best to set about his release. From within the bathroom, rising and falling like the vibrations of a small but powerful engine, could be heard the alarming pant of the asthma victim. Dr Trelawney sounded in extremity. Something must be done quickly. There was no doubt of that. Albert bent forward and put his mouth to the keyhole.

‘Try again, Dr Trelawney,’ he shouted.

The awful panting continued for a minute or two; then, very weak and shaky, came Dr Trelawney’s thin, insistent voice.

‘I am not strong enough,’ he said.

Albert turned towards us and shook his head.

‘He’s done this before,’ he said in a lower tone. ‘It’s my belief he just wants to get attention. He was angry when your uncle died, Mr Nick, and the wife and I had to see about that, and not about him for a change. It can’t go on. I won’t put up with it. He’ll have to go. I’ve said so before. It’s too much. Flesh and blood won’t stand it.’

‘Shall we bust the door down?’ said Duport. ‘I could if I took a run at it, but there isn’t quite enough space to do that here.’

That was true. The bathroom door stood at an angle by the end of the passage, built in such a way that violent attack of that kind upon it was scarcely possible. Dr Trelawney’s hoarse, trembling voice came again.

‘Telephone to Mrs Erdleigh,’ he said. ‘Tell her to bring my pills. I must have my pills.’

This request seemed to bring some relief to Albert.

‘I’ll do that right away, sir,’ he shouted through the keyhole.

‘What on earth can Mrs Erdleigh do?’ said Duport.

Albert, with an old-fashioned gesture, touched the side of his nose with his forefinger.

‘I know what he wants now,’ he said. ‘One of his special pills. I might have thought of Mrs Erdleigh before. We’ll have him out when she comes. She’ll do it.’

‘What pills are they?’

‘Better not ask, sir,’ said Albert.

‘Drugs, do you mean?’

‘I’ve never pressed the matter, sir, nor where they come from.’

Duport and I were left alone in the passage.

‘I suppose we could smash the panel,’ he said. ‘Shall I try to find an instrument?’

‘Better not break the house up. Anyway, not until Albert returns. Besides, it would wake everybody. We don’t want a bevy of old ladies to appear.’

‘Try taking the key out, Dr Trelawney,’ said Duport in an authoritative voice, ‘then put it back again and have another turn. That sometimes works. I know that particular key. I thought I was stuck in the bloody hole myself yesterday, but managed to get out that way.’

At first there was no answer. When at last he replied, Dr Trelawney sounded suspicious.

‘Who is that?’ he asked. ‘Where has Mr Creech gone?’

‘It’s Duport. You know, we sometimes talk in the lounge. You borrowed my Financial Times the other morning. Creech has gone to ring Mrs Erdleigh.’

There was another long silence, during which Dr Trelawney’s breathing grew a little less heavy. Evidently he was making a great effort to bring himself under control, now that he found that people, in addition to Albert, were at work on his rescue. Then the ritual sentence sounded through the door:

‘The Essence of the All is the Godhead of the True.’

Duport turned to me and shook his head.

‘We often get that,’ he said.

This seemed the moment, now or never, when the spell must prove its worth. I leant towards his keyhole and spoke the concordant rejoinder:

‘The Vision of Visions heals the Blindness of Sight.’

Duport laughed.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he said.

‘That’s the right answer.’

‘How on earth did you know?’

We heard the sound of Dr Trelawney heaving himself up with difficulty from wherever he was sitting. He must have staggered across the bathroom, for he made a great deal of noise as he came violently into contact with objects obstructive to his passage. Then he reached the door and began to fumble with the key. He removed it from the lock; after a moment or two he tried once more to insert it in the keyhole. Several of these attempts failed. Then, suddenly, quite unexpectedly, came a hard scraping sound; the key could be heard turning slowly; there was a click; the door stood ajar. Dr Trelawney was before us on the threshold.

‘I told you that would work,’ said Duport.

Except for the beard, hardly a trace remained of the Dr Trelawney I dimly remembered. All was changed. Even the beard, straggling, dirty grey, stained yellow in places like the patches of broom on the common beyond Stonehurst, had lost all resemblance to that worn by the athletic, vigorous prophet of those distant days. Once broad and luxuriant, it was now shrivelled almost to a goatee. He no longer seemed to have stepped down from a stained-glass window or ikon. His skin was dry and blotched. Dark spectacles covered his eyes, his dressing-gown a long blue oriental robe that swept the ground. He really looked rather frightening. Although so altered from the Stonehurst era, he still gave me the same chilly feeling of inner uneasiness that I had known as a child when I watched him and his flock trailing across the heather. I remembered Moreland, when we had once talked of Dr

Trelawney, quoting the lines from Marmioti, where the king consults the wizard lord:

‘Dire dealings with the fiendish race

Had mark’d strange lines upon his face;

Vigil and fast had worn him grim,

His eyesight dazzled seem’d and dim …’

That just about described Dr Trelawney as he supported himself against the doorpost, seized with another fearful fit of coughing. I do not know what Duport and I would have done with him, if Albert had not reappeared at that moment. Albert was relieved, certainly, but did not seem greatly surprised that we had somehow brought about this liberation.

‘Mrs Erdleigh promised she’d be along as quick as possible,’ he said, ‘but there were a few things she had to do first. I’m glad you was able to get the door open at last, sir. Mrs Creech must have that door seen to. I’ve spoken to her about it before. Might be better if you used the other bathroom in future, Dr Trelawney, we don’t want such a business another night.’

Dr Trelawney did not reply to this suggestion, perhaps because Albert spoke in what was, for him, almost a disrespectful tone, certainly a severe one. Instead, he held out his arms on either side of him, the hands open, as if in preparation for crucifixion.

‘I must ask you two gentlemen to assist me to my room,’ he said. ‘I am too weak to walk unaided. That sounds like the beginning of an evangelical hymn:

I am too weak to … walk unaided …

The fact is I must be careful of this shell I call my body, though why I should be, I hardly know. Perhaps from mere courtesy to my medical advisers. There have been warnings — cerebral congestion.’

He laughed rather disagreeably. We supported him along the passage, led by Albert. In his room, not without effort, we established him in the bed. The exertions of Duport and myself brought this about, not much aided by Albert, who, breathing hard, showed little taste for the job. Duport, on the other hand, had been enjoying himself thoroughly since the beginning of this to-do. Action, excitement were what he needed. They showed another side to him. Dr Trelawney, too, was enjoying himself by now. So far from being exhausted by this heaving about of the shell he called his body, he was plainly stimulated by all that had happened. He had mastered his fit of asthma, brought on, no doubt, as Albert had suggested, by boredom and depression. The Bellevue must in any case have represented a low ebb in Dr Trelawney’s fortunes. Plenty of attention made him almost well again. He lay back on his pillows, indicating by a movement of the hands that he wished us to stay and talk with him until the arrival of Mrs Erdleigh.

‘Bring some glasses, my friend,’ he said to Albert. ‘We shall need four — a number portending obstacles and opposition in the symbolism of cards — yet necessary for our present purpose, if Myra Erdleigh is soon to be of our party.’

Albert, thankful to have Dr Trelawney out of the bathroom and safely in bed at so small a cost, went off to fetch the glasses without any of the peevishness to be expected of him when odd jobs were in question. Dr Trelawney’s request seemed to have reference to a half-bottle of brandy, already opened, that stood on the wash-stand. I had been prepared to find myself in an alchemist’s cell, where occult processes matured in retorts and cauldrons, reptiles hung from the ceiling while their venom distilled, homunculi in bottles lined the walls. However, there were no dog-eared volumes of the Cabbala to be seen, no pentagrams or tarot cards. Instead, Dr Trelawney’s room was very like that formerly occupied by Uncle Giles, no bigger, just as dingy. A pile of luggage lay in one corner, some suits — certainly ancient enough — hung on coat-hangers suspended from the side of the wardrobe. The only suggestion of the Black Arts was wafted by a faint, sickly smell, not immediately identifiable: incense? hair-tonic? opium? It was hard to say whether the implications were chemical, medicinal, ritualistic; a scent vaguely disturbing, like Dr Trelawney’s own personality. Albert returned with the glasses, then said good night, adding a word about latching the front door when Mrs Erdleigh left. He must have been used to her visits at a late hour. Duport and I were left alone with the Doctor. He told us to distribute the brandy — the flask was about a quarter full — allowing a share for Mrs Erdleigh herself when she arrived. Duport took charge, pouring out drink for the three of us.

‘Which of you answered me through the door?’ asked Dr Trelawney, when he had drunk some brandy.

‘I did.’

‘You know my teachings then?’

I told him I remembered the formula from Stonehurst. That was not strictly speaking true, because I should never have carried the words in my head all those years, if I had not heard Moreland and others talk of the Doctor in later life. My explanation did not altogether please Dr Trelawney, either because he wished to forget that period of his career, or because it too painfully recalled happier, younger days, when his cult was more flourishing. Possibly he felt disappointment that I should turn out to be no new, hitherto unknown, disciple, full of untapped enthusiasm, admiring from afar, who now at last found dramatic opportunity to disclose himself. He made no comment at all. There was something decidedly unpleasant about him, sinister, at the same time absurd, that combination of the ludicrous and alarming soon to be widely experienced by contact with those set in authority in wartime.

‘I may be said to have come from Humiliation into Triumph,’ he said, ‘the traditional theme of Greek Tragedy. The climate of this salubrious resort does not really suit me. In fact, I cannot think why I stay. Perhaps because I cannot afford to pay my bill and leave. Nor is there much company in the Bellevue calculated to revive failing health and spirits. And you, sir? Why are you enjoying the ozone here, if one may ask? Perhaps for the same reason as Mr Duport, who has confided to me some of the secrets of his own private prison-house.’

Dr Trelawney smiled, showing teeth as yellow and irregular as the stains on his beard. He was, I thought, a tremendously Edwardian figure: an Edwardian figure of fun, one might say. All the same, I remembered that a girl had thrown herself from a Welsh mountain-top on his account. Such things were to be considered in estimating his capacity. His smile was one of the worst things about him. I saw that Duport must be on closer terms with the Doctor than he had pretended. I had certainly not grasped the fact that they already knew each other well enough to have exchanged reasons for residing at the Bellevue. Indeed, Duport, while he had been drinking at the Royal, seemed almost deliberately to have obscured their comparative intimacy. There was nothing very surprising about their confiding in one another. Total strangers in bars and railway carriages will unfold the story of their lives at the least opportunity. It was probably true to say that the hotel contained no more suitable couple to make friends. The details about his married life which Duport had imparted to me showed that he was a more complicated, more introspective character than I had ever guessed. His connexion with Jean was now less mysterious to me. No doubt Jimmy Stripling’s esoteric goings-on had familiarised Duport, more or less, with people of Dr Trelawney’s sort. In any case, Dr Trelawney was probably pretty good at worming information out of other residents. Even during the time we had been sitting in the room I had become increasingly aware of his pervasive, quasi-hypnotic powers, possessed to a greater or lesser degree by all persons — not necessarily connected with occultism — who form little cults devoted primarily to veneration of themselves. This awareness was not because I felt myself in danger of falling under Dr Trelawney’s dominion, though it conveyed an instinctive warning to be on one’s guard. Perhaps the feeling was no more than a grown-up version of childish fantasies about him, perhaps a tribute to his will. I was not certain. Duport, on the other hand, appeared perfectly at ease. He sat in a broken-down armchair facing the bed, his hands in his pockets. I explained about my early associations with Albert, about Uncle Giles’s funeral.

‘I used to talk with your uncle,’ said Dr Trelawney.

‘What did you think of him?’

‘A thwarted spirit, a restless soul wandering the vast surfaces of the earth.’

‘He never found a job he liked.’

‘Men do not gather grapes from off a thorn.’

‘He told you about himself?’

‘It was not necessary. Every man bears on his forehead the story of his days, an open volume to the initiate.’

‘From that volume, you knew him well?’

‘Who can be said to know well? All men are mysteries.’

‘There was no mystery about your uncle’s grousing,’ said Duport. ‘The only thing he was cheerful about was saying there would not be a war. What do you think, Dr Trelawney?’

‘What will be, must be.’

‘Which means war, in my opinion,’ said Duport.

‘The sword of Mithras, who each year immolates the sacred bull, will ere long now flash from its scabbard.’

‘You’ve said it.’

‘The slayer of Osiris once again demands his grievous tribute of blood. The Angel of Death will ride the storm.’

‘Could this situation have been avoided?’ I asked.

‘The god, Mars, approaches the earth to lay waste. Moreover, the future is ever the consequence of the past.’

‘And we ought to have knocked Hider out when he first started making trouble?’

I remembered Ted Jeavons had held that view.

‘The Four Horsemen are at the gate. The Kaiser went to war for shame of his withered arm. Hitler will go to war because at official receptions the tails of his evening coat sweep the floor like a clown’s.’

‘Seems an inadequate reason,’ said Duport.

‘Such things are a paradox to the uninstructed — to the adept they are clear as morning light.’

‘I must be one of the uninstructed,’ said Duport.

‘You are not alone in that.’

‘Just one of the crowd?’

‘Reason is given to all men, but all men do not know how to use it. Liberty is offered to each one of us, but few learn to be free. Such gifts are, in any case, a right to be earned, not a privilege for the shiftless.’

‘How do you recommend earning it?’ asked Duport, stretching out his long legs in front of him, slumping down into the depths of the armchair. ‘I’ve got to rebuild my business connexions. I could do with a few hints.’

‘The education of the will is the end of human life.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know.’

‘But can you always apply the will?’ said Duport. ‘Could I have renewed my severed credits by the will?’

‘I am concerned with the absolute.’

‘So am I. An absolute balance at the bank.’

‘You speak of material trifles. The great Eliphas Levi, whose precepts I quote to you, said that one who is afraid of fire will never command salamanders.’

‘I don’t need to command salamanders. I want to shake the metal market.’

‘To know, to dare, to will, to keep silence, those are the things required.’

‘And what’s the bonus for these surplus profits?’

‘You have spoken your modest needs.’

‘But what else can the magicians offer?’

‘To be for ever rich, for ever young, never to die.’

‘Do they, indeed?’

‘Such was in every age the dream of the alchemist.’

‘Not a bad programme — let’s have the blue-prints.’

‘To attain these things, as I have said, you must emancipate the will from servitude, instruct it in the art of domination.’

‘You should meet a mutual friend of ours called Widmerpool,’ said Duport. ‘He would agree with you. He’s very keen on domination. Don’t you think so, Jenkins? Anyway, Dr Trelawney, what action do you recommend to make a start?’

‘Power does not surrender itself. Like a woman, it must be seized.’

Duport jerked his head in my direction.

‘I offered him a woman in the bar of the Royal this evening,’ he said, ‘but he declined. He wouldn’t seize one. I must admit Fred never has much on hand.’

‘Cohabitation with antipathetic beings is torment,’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘Has that never struck you, my dear friend?’

‘Time and again,’ said Duport, laughing loudly. ‘Perfect hell. I’ve done quite a bit of it in my day. Would you like to hear some of my experiences?’

‘Why should we wish to ruminate on your most secret orgies?’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘What profit for us to muse on your nights in the lupanar, your diabolical couplings with the brides of debauch, more culpable than those phantasms of the incubi that rack the dreams of young girls, or the libidinous gymnastics of the goat-god whose ice-cold sperm fathers monsters on writhing witches in coven?’

Duport shook with laughter. I saw that one of Dr Trelawney’s weapons was flattery, though flattery of no trite kind, in fact the best of all flattery, the sort disguised as disagreement or rebuke.

‘So you don’t want a sketch of my love life in its less successful moments?’ said Duport.

Dr Trelawney shook his head.

‘There have been some good moments too,’ said Duport. ‘Don’t get me wrong.’

‘He alone can truly possess the pleasures of love,’ said Dr Trelawney, ‘who has gloriously vanquished the love of pleasure.’

‘Is that your technique?’

‘If you would possess, do not give.’

‘I’ve known plenty of girls who thought that, my wife among them.’

‘Continual caressing begets satiety.’

‘She thought that too. You should meet. However, if what you said about a war coming is true — and it’s what I think myself — why bother? We shall soon be as dead as Jenkins’s uncle.’

Duport had a way of switching from banter to savage melancholy.

‘There is no death in Nature,’ said Dr Trelawney, ‘only transition, blending, synthesis, mutation.’

‘All the same,’ said Duport, ‘to take this uncle of Jenkins’s again, you must admit, from his point of view, it was different sitting in the Bellevue lounge, from lying in a coffin at the crematorium, his present whereabouts, as I understand from his nephew.’

‘Those who no longer walk beside us on the void expanses of this fleeting empire of created light have no more reached the absolute end of their journey than birth was for them the absolute beginning. They have merely performed their fugitive pilgrimage from embryo to ashes. They are in the world no longer. That is all we can say.’

‘But what more can anyone say?’ said Duport. ‘You’re put in a box and stowed away underground, or cremated in the Jenkins manner. In other words, you’re dead.’

‘Death is a mere phantom of ignorance,’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘It does not exist. The flesh is the raiment of the soul. When that raiment has grown threadbare or is torn asunder by violent hands, it must be abandoned. There is witness without end. When men know how to live, they will no longer die, no more cry with Faustus:

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!’

Dr Trelawney and Duport were an odd couple arguing together about the nature of existence, the immortality of the soul, survival after death. The antithetical point of view each represented was emphasised by their personal appearance. This rather bizarre discussion was brought to an end by a knock on the door.

‘Enter,’ said Dr Trelawney.

He spoke in a voice of command. Mrs Erdleigh came into the room. Dr Trelawney raised himself into a sitting position, leaning back on his elbows.

‘The Essence of the All is the Godhead of the True.’

‘The Vision of Visions heals the Blindness of Sight.’

While she pronounced the incantation, Mrs Erdleigh smiled in a faintly deprecatory manner, like a grown-up who, out of pure good nature, humours the whim of a child. I remembered the same expression coming into her face when speaking to Uncle Giles. Dr Trelawney made a dramatic gesture of introduction, showing his fangs again in one of those awful grins as he lay back on the pillow.

‘Mr Duport, you’ve met, Myra,’ he said. ‘This gentleman here is the late Captain Jenkins’s nephew, bearing the same name.’

He rolled his eyes in my direction, indicating Mrs Erdleigh.

‘Connaissez-vous la vieille souveraine du monde,’ he said, ‘qui marche toujours, et ne se fatigue jamais? In this incarnation, she passes under the name of Mrs Erdleigh.’

‘Mr Jenkins and I know each other already,’ she said, with a smile.

‘I might have guessed,’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘She knows all.’

‘And your introduction was not very polite,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘I am not as old as she to whom the Abbé referred.’

‘Be not offended, priestess of Isis. You have escaped far beyond the puny fingers of Time.’

She turned from him, holding out her hand to me.

‘I knew you were here,’ she said.

‘Did Albert say I was coming?’

‘It was not necessary. I know such things. Your poor uncle passed over peacefully. More peacefully than might have been expected.’

She wore a black coat with a high fur collar, a tricorne hat, also black, riding on the summit of grey curls. These had taken the place of the steep bank of dark-reddish tresses of the time when I had met her at the Ufford with Uncle Giles seven or eight years before. Then, I had imagined her nearing fifty. Lunching with the Templers eighteen months later (when she had arrived with Jimmy Stripling), I decided she was younger. Now, she was not so much aged as an entirely different woman — what my brother-in-law, Hugo Tolland, used to call (apropos of his employer, Mrs Baldwyn Hodges) a ‘blue-rinse marquise’. This new method of doing her hair, the tone and texture of which suggested a wig, together with the three-cornered hat, recalled Longhi, the Venetian ridotto. You felt Mrs Erdleigh had just removed her mask before paying this visit to Cagliostro — or, as it turned out with no great difference, to Dr Trelawney.

‘Sad that your mother-in-law, Lady Warminster, passed over too,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘She had not consulted me for some years, but I foretold both her marriages. I warned her that her second husband should beware of the Eagle — symbol of the East, you know — and of the Equinox of Spring. Lord Warminster died in Kashmir at just that season.’

‘She is greatly missed in the family.’

‘Lady Warminster was a woman among women,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘I shall never forget her gratitude when I revealed to her that Tuesday was the best day for the operation of revenge.’

Dr Trelawney was becoming restive, either because Mrs Erdleigh had made herself the centre of attention, or because his own ‘treatment’ had been delayed too long.

‘We think we should have our … er … pill, ha-ha,’ he said, trying to laugh, but beginning to twitch dreadfully. ‘We do not wish to cut short so pleasurable an evening. I am eternally grateful to you, gentlemen — though to name eternity is redundant, since we all perforce have our being within it — and I hope we shall meet again, if only in the place where the last are said to be first, though, for my own part, I shall not be surprised if the first are first there too.’

‘We shall have to turn in as well,’ said Duport, rising, ‘or I shall have no head for figures tomorrow.’

I thought Duport did not much care for Mrs Erdleigh, certainly disliked the fact that she and I had met before.

‘The gods brook no more procrastination,’ said Dr Trelawney, his hoarse voice rising sharply in key. ‘I am like one of those about to adore the demon under the figure of a serpent, or such as make sorceries with vervain and periwinkle, sage, mint, ash and basil …’

Mrs Erdleigh had taken off her coat and hat. She was fumbling in a large black bag she had brought with her. Dr Trelawney’s voice now reached an agonised screech.

‘… votaries of the Furies who use branches of cedar, alder, hawthorn, saffron and juniper in their sacrifices of turtle doves and sheep, who pour upon the ground libations of wine and honey …’

Mrs Erdleigh almost hustled us through the door. There was something in her hand, a small instrument that caught the light.

‘I shall be with my old friend at the last tomorrow,’ she said, opening wide her huge, misty eyes.

The door closed. There was the sound of the key turning in the lock, then, as we moved off down the passage, of water poured into a basin.

‘You see what living at the Bellevue is like,’ said Duport.

‘I’m surprised you find it boring. Have you still got The Perfumed Garden?’

‘What’s that?’

‘The book I gave you — The Arab Art of Love.’

‘Hell,’ said Duport, ‘I left it in Trelawney’s room. Well, I can get it again tomorrow, if he hasn’t peddled it by then.’

‘Good night.’

‘Good night,’ said Duport. ‘I don’t envy you having to turn out for your uncle’s funeral in the morning.’

The Bellevue mattress was a hard one. Night was disturbed by dreams. Dr Trelawney — who had shaved his head and wore RAF uniform — preached from the baroquely carved pulpit of a vast cathedral on the text that none should heed Billson’s claim to be pregnant by him of a black messiah. These and other aberrant shapes made the coming of day welcome. I rose, beyond question impaired by the drinks consumed with Duport, all the same anxious to get through my duties. Outside, the weather was sunny, all that the seaside required. Nevertheless, I wanted only to return to London. While I dressed, I wondered whether the goings-on of the night before had disturbed other residents of the hotel. When I reached the dining-room, the air of disquiet there made me think we had made more noise than I had supposed. Certainly the murmur of conversation was uneasy at the tables of the old ladies. An atmosphere of tension made itself felt at once. Duport, unexpectedly in his place, was eating a kipper, a pile of disordered newspapers lying on the floor beside him. I made some reference to the unwisdom of terminating an evening of that sort with Dr Trelawney’s brandy. Duport made a face. He ignored my comment.

‘Nice news,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Germany and Russia.’

‘What have they done? I haven’t seen a paper.’

‘Signed a Non-Aggression Pact with each other.’

He handed me one of the newspapers. I glanced at the headlines.

‘Cheerful situation, you will agree,’ said Duport.

‘Makes a good start to the day.’

I felt a sinking inside me as I read.

‘Molotov and Ribbentrop,’ said Duport. ‘Sound like the names of a pair of performing monkeys. Just the final touch to balls up my affairs.’

‘It will be war all right now.’

‘And Hitler will be able to buy all the chromite he wants from the Soviet.’

‘So what?’

‘It’s good-bye to my return to Turkey, whatever happens.’

‘But if there’s war, shan’t we want the stuff more than ever?’

‘Of course we shall. Even a bloody book-reviewer, or whatever you are, can see that. It doesn’t prevent Widmerpool from failing to grasp the point. The probability of war made the pre-empting of the Turkish market essential to this country.’

‘Then why not still?’

‘Buying chromite to prevent Germany from getting it, and buying it just for our own use, are not the same thing. All the chromite Germany wants will now be available from Russian sources — and a bloody long list of other important items too.’

‘I see.’

‘Donners will handle matters differently now. I shall drop out automatically. I might get another job out of him, not that one. But can you imagine Widmerpool being such a fool as to suppose the prospect of war would diminish Donners-Brebner requirements. “Cut down our commitments”, indeed.’

Duport spat out some kipper-bones on to his plate. He took several deep gulps of coffee.

‘Of course in a way Widmerpool turned out to be right,’ he said. ‘As usual, his crassness brought him luck. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t wonder if he didn’t cut off my credits as much from spite as obtuseness.’

‘Why should Widmerpool want to spite you?’

‘Just to show who’s master. I sent him one or two pretty curt telegrams. He didn’t like that. Probably decided to get his own back. Anyway, I’m up a gum tree now.’

I saw he had cause to grumble. At that moment, I could not spare much sympathy. In any case, I did not care for Duport, although I had to admit he had his points. He was, in his way, a man of action. Ahead, I thought, lay plenty of opportunity for action of one kind or another. Even now, a thousand things had to be done. Then and there, the only course to follow was to oversee Uncle Giles’s cremation, return home, try to make plans in the light of the new international situation.

‘ ’Spect they’ll requisition the place now all right,’ said Albert, when I saw him. ‘That’s if there’s anything to requisition in a day or two. Hitler’s not one to tell us when he’s coming. Just loose a lot of bombs, I reckon. The wife’s still poorly and taking on a treat about the blackout in the bedrooms.’

For a man who thoroughly disliked danger, Albert faced the prospect of total war pretty well. At best its circumstances would shatter the props of his daily life at a time when he was no longer young. All the same, the Germans, the Russians, the suffragettes were all one when it came to putting up the shutters. He might be afraid when a policeman walked up the Stonehurst drive; that trepidation was scarcely at all increased by the prospect of bombardment from the air. Indeed, his fear was really a sort of courage, fear and courage being close to each other, like love and hate.

‘Mr Duport and I sat up with Dr Trelawney for a while after he went to bed last night,’ I said.

Albert shook his head.

‘Don’t know how we’re going to get rid of him now,’ he said. ‘Flesh and blood won’t stand it much longer. If there’s requisitioning, he’ll be requisitioned like the rest of us, I suppose. It won’t do no good talking. Well, it’s been nice seeing you again, Mr Nick.’

I felt no more wish to adjudicate between Albert and Dr Trelawney than between Duport and Widmerpool. They must settle their own problems. I went on my way. The crematorium was a blaze of sunshine. I had a word with the clergyman. It looked as if I was going to be the only mourner. Then, just as the service was about to begin, Mrs Erdleigh turned up. She was shrouded in black veils that seemed almost widow’s weeds. She leant towards me and whispered some greeting, then retired to a seat at the back of the little chapel. The clergyman’s voice sounded as if he, too, had sat up drinking the night before, though his appearance put such a surmise out of court.

‘… For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them …’

Uncle Giles’s spirit hovered in the air. I could well imagine one of his dissertations on such a theme. The coffin slid through the trap-door with perfect precision: Uncle Giles’s remains committed to a nomad’s pyre. I turned to meet Mrs Erdleigh. She had already slipped away. Her evasiveness was perhaps due to delicacy, because, when Uncle Giles’s will (proved at the unexpectedly large figure of seven thousand, three hundred pounds) came to light, Mrs Erdleigh turned out to be the sole legatee. Uncle Giles could not be said to have heaped up riches, but he had seen to it that his relations did not gather them. It was one of those testamentary surprises, like St John Clarke’s leaving his money to Erridge. The bequest gave some offence within the family.

‘Giles was always an unreliable fellow,’ said my father, ‘but we mustn’t speak ill of him now.’