A handful of dust (13 page)

Three

Lady St. Cloud preserved an atavistic faith in the authority and preternatural good judgment of the Head of the Family; accordingly her first act, on learning from Marjorie of Brenda's wayward behaviour, was to cable for Reggie's return from Tunisia where he was occupied in desecrating some tombs. His departure, like all his movements, was leisurely. He did not take the first available boat or the second, but eventually he arrived in London on the Monday after Tony's visit to Brighton. He held a family conclave in his library consisting of his mother, Brenda, Marjorie, Allan and the solicitor; later he discussed the question fully with each of them severally; he took Beaver out to luncheon; he dined with Jock; he even called on Tony's Aunt Frances. Finally on Thursday evening he arranged to meet Tony for dinner at Brown's. He was eight years older than Brenda; very occasionally a fugitive, indefinable likeness was detectable between him and Marjorie, but both in character and appearance he was as different from Brenda as it was possible to imagine. He was prematurely, unnaturally stout, and he carried his burden of flesh as though he were not yet used to it; as though it had been buckled on to him that morning for the first time and he were still experimenting for its better adjustment; there was an instability in his gait and in his eyes, a furtive look as though he were at any moment liable to ambush and realised that he was unfairly handicapped for flight. This impression, however, was made solely by his physical appearance; it was the deep bed of fat in which his eyes lay, which gave them this look of suspicion; the caution of his movements resulted from the exertion of keeping his balance and not from any embarrassment at his own clumsiness, for it had never occurred to him that he looked at all unusual. Rather more than half Reggie St. Cloud's time and income was spent abroad in modest archaeological expeditions. His house in London was full of their fruit-fragmentary amphoras, corroded bronze axe-heads, little splinters of bone and charred stick, a Graeco-Roman head in marble, its features obliterated and ground smooth with time. He had written two little monographs about his work, privately printed and both dedicated to members of the royal family. When he came to London he was regular in attendance at the House of Lords; all his friends were well over forty and for some years now he had established himself as a member of their generation; few mothers still regarded him as a possible son-in-law. "This whole business of Brenda is very unfortunate," said Reggie St. Cloud. Tony agreed. "My mother is extremely upset about it, naturally. I'm upset myself. I don't mind admitting, perfectly frankly, that I think she has behaved very foolishly, foolishly and wrongly. I can quite understand your being upset about it too." "Yes," said Tony. "But all the same, making every allowance for your feelings, I do think that you are behaving rather vindictively in the matter." "I'm doing exactly what Brenda wanted." "My dear fellow, she doesn't know what she wants. I saw this chap Beaver yesterday. I didn't like him at all. Do you?" "I hardly know him." "Well I can assure you I didn't like him. Now you're just throwing Brenda into his arms. That's what it amounts to, as I see it, and I call it vindictive. Of course at the moment Brenda's got the idea that she's in love with him. But it won't last. It couldn't with a chap like Beaver. She'll want to come back in a year, just you see. Allan says the same." "I've told Allan. I don't want her back." "Well, that's vindictive." "No, I just couldn't feel the same about her again." "Well, why feel the same? One has to change as one gets older. Why, ten years ago I couldn't be interested in anything later than the Sumerian age and I assure you that now I find even the Christian era full of significance." For some time he spoke about some tabulae execrationum that he had lately unearthed. "Almost every grave had them," he said, "mostly referring to the circus factions, scratched on lead. They used to be dropped in through a funnel. We had found forty-three up to date, before this wretched business happened, and I had to come back. Naturally I'm upset." He sat for a little eating silently. This last observation had brought the conversation back to its point of departure. He clearly had more to say on the subject and was meditating the most convenient approach. He ate in a ruthless manner, champing his food (it was his habit, often, without noticing it, to consume things that others usually left on their plates, the heads and tails of whiting, whole mouthfuls of chicken bone, peach stones and apple cores, cheese rinds and the fibrous parts of the artichoke). "Besides, you know," he said, "it isn't as though it was all Brenda's fault." "I haven't been thinking particularly whose fault it is." "Well that's all very well but you seem rather to be taking the line of the injured husband-saying you can't feel the same again, and all that. I mean to say, it takes two to make a quarrel and I gather things had been going wrong for some time. For instance you'd been drinking a lot-have some more burgundy by the way." "Did Brenda say that?" "Yes. And then you'd been going round a bit with other girls yourself. There was some woman with a Moorish name you had to stay at Hetton while Brenda was there. Well that's a bit thick you know. I'm all for people going their own way but if they do, they can't blame others, if you see what I mean." "Did Brenda say that?" "Yes. Don't think I'm trying to lecture you or anything, but all I feel is that you haven't any right to be vindictive to Brenda, as things are." "She said I drank and was having an affair with the woman with a Moorish name." "Well I don't know she actually said that, but she said you'd been getting tight lately and that you were certainly interested in that girl." The fat young man opposite Tony ordered prunes and cream. Tony said he had finished dinner. He had imagined during the preceding week-end that nothing could now surprise him. "So that really explains what I want to say," continued Reggie blandly. "It's about money. I understand that when Brenda was in a very agitated state just after the death of her child, she consented to some verbal arrangement with you about settlements." "Yes, I'm allowing her five hundred a year." "Well you know I don't think that you have any right to take advantage of her generosity in that way. It was most imprudent of her to consider your proposal-she admits now that she was not really herself when she did so." "What does she suggest instead?" "Let's go outside and have coffee." When they were settled in front of the fire in the empty smoking room, he answered, "Well I've discussed it with the lawyers and with the family and we decided that the sum should be increased to two thousand." "That's quite out of the question. I couldn't begin to afford it." "Well, you know, I have to consider Brenda's interests. She has very little of her own and there will be no more coming to her. My mother's income is an allowance which I pay under my father's will. I shan't be able to give her anything. I am trying to raise everything I can for an expedition to one of the oases in the Lybian desert. This chap Beaver has got practically nothing and doesn't look like earning any. So you see-" "But, my dear Reggie, you know as well as I do that it's out of the question." "It's rather less than a third of your income." "Yes but almost every penny goes on the estate. Do you realise that Brenda and I together haven't spent half the amount a year on our personal expenses. It's all I can do to keep things going as it is." "I didn't expect you'd take this line, Tony. I think its extremely unreasonable of you. After all it's absurd to pretend in these days that a single man can't be perfectly comfortable on four thousand a year. It's more than I've ever had." "It would mean giving up Hetton." "Well I gave up Brakeleigh, and I assure you, my dear fellow, I never regret it. It was a nasty wrench at the time of course, old association and everything like that, but I can tell you this, that when the sale was finally through I felt a different man, free to go where I liked..." "But I don't happen to want to go anywhere else except Hetton." "There's a lot in what these labour fellows say, you know. Big houses are a thing of the past in England I'm afraid." "Tell me, did Brenda realise when she agreed to this proposal that it meant my leaving Hetton." "Yes, it was mentioned I think. I daresay you'll find it quite easy to sell to a school or something like that. I remember the agent said when I was trying to get rid of Brakeleigh that it was a pity it wasn't Gothic because schools and convents always go for Gothic. I daresay you'll get a very comfortable price and find yourself better off in the end than you are now." "No. It's impossible," said Tony. "You're making things extremely awkward for everyone," said Reggie. "I can't understand why you are taking up this attitude." "What is more I don't believe that Brenda ever expected or wanted me to agree." "Oh yes, she did, my dear fellow. I assure you of that." "It's inconceivable." "Well, said Reggie, puffing at his cigar. "There's more to it than just money. Perhaps I'd better tell you everything. I hadn't meant to. The truth is that Beaver is cutting up nasty. He says he can't marry Brenda unless she's properly provided for. Not fair on her, he says. I quite see his point on a way." "Yes, I see his point," said Tony. "So what your proposal really amounts to is that I should give up Hetton in order to buy Beaver for Brenda." "It's not how I should have put it," said Reggie. "Well I'm not going to and that's the end of it. If that's all you wanted to say, I may as well leave you." "No, it isn't quite all I wanted to say. In fact I think I must have put things rather badly. It comes from trying to respect people's feelings too much. You see I wasn't so much asking you to agree to anything as explaining what our side propose to do. I've tried to keep everything on a friendly basis but I see it's not possible. Brenda will ask for alimony of two thousand a year from the Court and on our evidence we shall get it. I'm sorry you oblige me to put it so bluntly." "I hadn't thought of that." "No, nor had we to be quite frank. It was Beaver's idea." "You seem to have got me in a fairly hopeless position." "It's not how I should have put it." "I should like to make absolutely sure that Brenda is in on this. D'you mind if I ring her up." "Not at all, my dear fellow. I happen to know she's at Marjorie's tonight." "Brenda, this is Tony... I've just been dining with Reggie." "Yes, he said something about it." "He tells me that you are going to sue for alimony. Is that so?" "Tony, don't be so bullying. The lawyers are doing everything. It's no use coming to me." "But did you know that they proposed to ask for two thousand?" "Yes. They did say that. I know it sounds a lot but..." "And you know exactly how my money stands don't you? You know it means selling Hetton, don't you?... hullo, are you still there?" "Yes, I'm here." "You know it means that?" "Tony, don't make me feel a beast. Everything has been so difficult." "You do know just what you are asking?" "Yes... I suppose so." "All right, that's all I wanted to know." "Tony, how odd you sound... don't ring off." He hung up the receiver and went back to the smoking room. His mind had suddenly become clearer on many points that had puzzled him. A whole Gothic world had come to grief... there was now no armour, glittering in the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the greensward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled... Reggie sat expanded in his chair. "Well?" "I got on to her. You were quite right. I'm sorry I didn't believe you. It seemed so unlikely at first." "That's all right, my dear fellow." "I've decided exactly what's going to happen." "Good." "Brenda is not going to get her divorce. The evidence I provided at Brighton isn't worth anything. There happens to have been a child there all the time. She slept both nights in the room I am supposed to have occupied. If you care to bring the case I shall defend it and win, but I think when you have seen my evidence you will drop it. I am going away for six months or so. When I come back, if she wishes it, I shall divorce Brenda without settlements of any kind. Is that clear?" "But look here, my dear fellow." "Goodnight. Thank you for dinner. Good luck to the excavations." On his way out of the club he noticed that John Beaver of Brat's Club was up for election. "Who on earth would have expected the old boy to turn up like that?" asked Polly Cockpurse. "Now I understand why they keep going on in the papers about divorce law reform," said Veronica. "It's too monstrous that be should be allowed to get away with it." "The mistake they made was in telling him first," said Souki. "It's so like Brenda to trust everyone," said Jenny. "I do think Tony comes out of this pretty poorly," said Marjorie. "Oh I don't know," said Allan. "I expect your ass of a brother put the thing wrong."

CHAPTER FIVE

In Search of a City

"ANY idea how many times round the deck make a mile?" "None, I'm afraid," said Tony. "But I should think you must have walked a great distance." "Twenty-two times. One soon gets out of sorts at sea if you're used to an active life. She's not much of a boat. Travel with this line often?" "Never before." "Ah. Thought you might have been in business in the islands. Not many tourists going out this time of year. Just the other way about. All coming home, if you see what I mean. Going far?" "Demerara." Ah. Looking for minerals perhaps?" "No, to tell you the truth I am looking for a city." The genial passenger was surprised and then laughed. "Sounded just like you said you were looking for a city." "Yes." "That was what you said?" "Yes." "I thought it sounded like that... well, so long. I must do another few rounds before dinner." He paced off up the deck, straddling slightly in order to keep his balance and occasionally putting out a hand to the rail for support. Regularly every three minutes for the last hour or so, this man had come by. At first Tony had looked up at his approach and then turned away again out to sea. Presently the man had taken to nodding, then to saying "Hullo" or "Bit choppy" or "Here we are again"; finally he had stopped and begun a conversation. Tony went aft to break this rather embarrassing recurrence. He descended the companion-way which led to the lower deck. Here, in crates lashed to the side, was a variety of livestock-some stud bulls, a heavily blanketed race-Horse, a couple of beagles, being exported to various West Indian islands. Tony threaded a way between them and the hatches to the stern, where he sat against a winch watching the horizon mount above the funnels, then fall until they stood out black against the darkening sky. The pitch was more sensible here than it had been amidships; the animals shifted restlessly in their cramped quarters; the beagles whined intermittently. A lascar took down from a line some washing which had been flapping there all day. The wash of the ship was quickly lost in the high waves. They were steaming westward down the Channel. As it grew to be night, lighthouses appeared flashing from the French coast. Presently a steward walked round the bright, upper deck striking chimes on a gong of brass cylinders and the genial passenger went below to prepare himself for dinner in hot sea water which splashed from side to side of the bath and dissolved the soap in a thin, sticky scum. He was the only man to dress that evening. Tony sat in the mustering darkness until the second bell. Then he left his greatcoat in the cabin and went down to dinner. It was the first evening at sea. Tony sat at the captain's table, but the captain was on the bridge that evening. There were empty chairs on either side of him. It was not rough enough for the fiddles to be out, but the stewards had removed the flower vases and damped the table-cloth to make it adhesive. A coloured archdeacon sat facing him. He ate with great refinement but his black hands looked immense on the wet, whitish cloth. "I'm afraid our table is not showing up very well tonight," he said. "I see you are not a sufferer. My wife is in her cabin. She is a sufferer." He was returning from a Congress, he told Tony. At the top of the stairs was a lounge named the Music and Writing Room. The light here was always subdued, in the day by the stained glass of the windows; at night by pink silk shades which hid the electric candles. Here the passengers assembled for their coffee, sitting on bulky, tapestry covered chesterfields or on swivel chairs irremovably fastened before the writing tables. Here too the steward for an hour every day presided over the cupboardful of novels which constituted the ship's library. "It's not much of a boat," said the genial passenger, sitting himself beside Tony. "But I expect things will look brighter when we get into the sun." Tony lit a cigar and was told by a steward that be must not smoke in this room. "That's all right," said the genial passenger, "we're just going down to the bar." "You know," he said a few minutes later, "I feel I owe you an apology. I thought you were potty just now before dinner. Honestly I did, when you said you were going to Demerara to look for a city. Well it sounded pretty potty. Then the purser-I'm at his table. Always get the cheeriest crowd at the purser's table and the best attention-the purser told me about you. You're the explorer aren't you?" "Yes, come to think of it, I suppose I am," said Tony. It did not come easily to him to realise that he was an explorer. It was barely a fortnight ago that he had become one. Even the presence in the hold of two vast crates, bearing his name and labelled NOT WANTED ON THE VOYAGE-crates containing such new and unfamiliar possessions as a medicine chest, an automatic shot gun, camping equipment, pack saddles, a cinema camera, dynamite, disinfectants, a collapsible canoe, filters, tinned butter and, strangest of all, an assortment of what Dr. Messinger called 'trade goods'-failed to convince him fully of the serious nature of his expedition. Dr. Messinger had arranged everything. It was he who chose the musical boxes and mechanical mice, the mirrors, combs, perfumery, pills, fish-hooks, axe-heads, coloured rockets, and rolls of artificial silk, which were packed in the box of 'trade goods.' And Dr. Messinger himself was a new acquaintance who, prostrate now in his bunk with what the Negro clergyman would have called 'suffering,' that day, for the first time since Tony had met him, seemed entirely human. Tony had spent very little of his life abroad. At the age of eighteen, before going to the University, he had been boarded for the summer with an elderly gentleman near Tours, with the intention that he should learn the language. (... a grey stone house surrounded by vines. There was a stuffed spaniel in the bathroom. The old man had called it 'Stop' because it was chic at that time to give dogs an English name. Tony had bicycled along straight, white roads to visit the châteaux; he carried rolls of bread and cold veal tied to the back of the machine, and the soft dust seeped into them through the paper and gritted against his teeth. There were two other English boys there, so he had learned little French. One of them fell in love and the other got drunk for the first time on sparkling Vouvray at a fair that had been held in the town. That evening Tony won a live pigeon at a tombola; he set it free and later saw it being recaptured by the proprietor of the stall with a butterfly net...) Later he had gone to central Europe for a few weeks with a friend from Balliol. (They had found themselves suddenly rich with the falling mark and had lived in unaccustomed grandeur in the largest hotel suites. Tony had bought a fur for a few shillings and given it to a girl in Munich who spoke no English.) Later still his honeymoon with Brenda in a villa, lent to them, on the Italian Riviera. (... cypress and olive trees, a donned church half way down the hill, between the villa and the harbour, a café where they sat out in the evening, watching the fishing boats and the lights reflected in the quiet water, waiting for the sudden agitation of sound and motion as the speed boat came in. It had been owned by a dashing young official, who called it JAZZ GIRL. He seemed to spend twenty hours a day running in and out of the little harbour...) Once Brenda and he had gone to Le Touquet with Brat's golf team. That was all. After his father died he had not left England. They could not easily afford it; it was one of the things they postponed until death duties were paid off; besides that, he was never happy away from Hetton and Brenda did not like leaving John Andrew. Thus Tony had no very ambitious ideas about travel, and when he decided to go abroad his first act was to call at a tourist agency and come away laden with a sheaf of brightly coloured prospectuses, which advertised commodious cruises among palm trees, Negresses and ruined arches. He was going away because it seemed to be the conduct expected of a husband in his circumstances, because the associations of Hetton were for the time poisoned for him, because he wanted to live for a few months away from people who would know him or Brenda, in places where there was no expectation of meeting her or Beaver or Reggie St. Cloud at every corner he frequented, and with this feeling of evasion dominant in his mind, he took the prospectuses to read at the Greville Club. He had been a member there for some years, but rarely used it; his resignation was only postponed by his recurrent omission to cancel the banker's order for his subscription. Now that Brat's and Brown's were distasteful to him he felt thankful that he had kept on with the Greville. It was a club of intellectual flavour, composed of dons, a few writers and the officials of museums and learned societies. It had a tradition of garrulity so that he was not surprised when, seated in an armchair and surrounded with his illustrated folders, he was addressed by a member unknown to him who asked if he were thinking of going away. He was more surprised when he looked up and studied the questioner. Dr. Messinger, though quite young, was bearded, and Tony knew few young men with beards. He was also very small, very sunburned and prematurely bald; the ruddy, brown of his face and hands ended abruptly along the line of his forehead, which rose in a pale dome; he wore steel-rimmed spectacles and there was something about his blue serge suit which suggested that the wearer found it uncomfortable. Tony admitted that he was considering taking a cruise. "I am going away shortly," said Dr. Messinger, "to Brazil. At least it may be Brazil or Dutch Guiana. One cannot tell. The frontier has never been demarcated. I ought to have started last week only my plans were upset. Do you by any chance know a Nicaraguan calling himself alternately Ponsonby and Fitz Clarence?" "No, I don't think I do." "You are fortunate. That man has just robbed me of two hundred pounds and some machine guns." "Machine guns?" "Yes, I travel with one or two, mostly for show you know, or for trade, and they are not easy to buy nowadays. Have you ever tried?" "No." "Well you can take it from me that it's not easy. You can't just walk into a shop and order machine guns." "No, I suppose not." "Still at a pinch I can do without them. But I can't do without the two hundred pounds." Tony had open on his knee a photograph of the harbour at Agadir. Dr. Messinger looked over his shoulder at it. "Ah yes," he said, "interesting little place. I expect you know Zingerman there?" "No, I've not been there yet." "You'd like him-a very straight fellow. He used to do quite a lot, selling ammunition to the Atlas caids before the pacification. Of course it was easy money with the capitulations, but he did it better than most of them. I believe he's running a restaurant now in Mogador. " Then he continued dreamily, "The pity is I can't let the R. G. S. in on this expedition. I've got to find the money privately." It was one o'clock and the room was beginning to fill up; an Egyptologist was exhibiting a handkerchief-ful of scarabs to the editor of a church weekly. "We'd better go up and lunch," said Dr. Messinger. Tony had not intended to lunch at the Greville but there was something compelling about the invitation; moreover, he had no other engagement. Dr. Messinger lunched off apples and a rice pudding. ("I have to be very careful what I eat," he said.) Tony ate cold steak and kidney pie. They sat at a window in the big dining room upstairs. The places round them were soon filled with members, who even carried the tradition of general conversation so far as to lean back in their chairs and chat over their shoulders from table to table-a practice which greatly hindered the already imperfect service. But Tony remained oblivious to all that was said, absorbed in what Dr. Messinger was telling him. "... You see there has been a continuous tradition about the City since the first explorers of the sixteenth century. It has been variously allocated, sometimes down in Matto Grosso, sometimes on the upper Orinoco in what is now Venezuela. I myself used to think it lay somewhere on the Uraricuera. I was out there last year and it was then that I established contact with the Pie-wie Indians; no white man had ever visited them and got out alive. And it was from the Pie-wies that I learned where to look. None of them had ever visited the City, of course, but they knew about it. Every Indian between Ciudad Bolivar and Para knows about it. But they won't talk. Queer people. But I became blood-brother with a Pie-wie-interesting ceremony. They buried me up to the neck in mud and all the women of the tribe spat on my head. Then we ate a toad and a snake and a beetle and after that I was a blood-brother-well, he told me that the City lies between the head waters of the Courantyne and the Takutu. There's a vast tract of unexplored country there. I've often thought of visiting it. "I've been looking up the historical side too, and I more or less know bow the City got there. It was the result of a migration from Peru at the beginning of the fifteenth century when the Incas were at the height of their power. It is mentioned in all the early Spanish documents as a popular legend. One of the younger princes rebelled and led his people off into the forest. Most of the tribes have a tradition in one form or another of a strange race passing through their territory." "But what do you suppose this city will be like?" "Impossible to say. Every tribe has a different word for it. The Pie-wies call it the 'Shining' or 'Glittering,' the Arekuna the 'Many Watered,' the Patamonas the 'Bright Feathered,' the Warau oddly enough, use the same word for it that they use for a kind of aromatic jam they make. Of course one can't tell how a civilization may have developed or degenerated in five hundred years of isolation..." Before Tony left the Greville that day, he tore up his sheaf of cruise prospectuses, for he had arranged to join Dr. Messinger in his expedition. "Done much of that kind of thing?" "No, to tell you the truth it is the first time." "Ah. Well I daresay it's more interesting than it sounds," conceded the genial passenger, "else people wouldn't do it so much." The ship, so far as any consideration of comfort had contributed to her design, was planned for the tropics. It was slightly colder in the smoking room than on deck. Tony went to his cabin and retrieved his cap and greatcoat; then he went aft again, to the place where he had sat before dinner. It was a starless night and nothing was visible beyond the small luminous area round the ship, save for a single lighthouse that flashed short-long, short-long, far away on the port bow. The crests of the waves caught the reflection from the promenade deck and shone for a