Adrian Glynde (7 page)

The old man could not resist his desire to be assured that the boy preferred his father. “But you were happiest of all,” he asked, “when you and your father were alone together?”

“Yes, it was lovely then,” answered Adrian with a glow in his voice. “And sometimes, but only very seldon, Mother went away on a visit, and we were together for days and days. We had splendid times then.”

Oliver smiled gently. “I'm sure you had,” he said.

“But it was wretched when Father went away, because then I was left alone.”

“But your mother was there?”

“Yes, but not so much as when Father was at home. She was nearly always out to tea when Father was away, and often out to lunch too. It was almost as if she was away too, when he was. And it was the same after he was killed in France. She was out a great deal, and when she was in, Miss Cotton said she was too upset to have me bothering her. Of course I wouldn't have bothered her really. After all, I was seven years old then. And then of course she went away to the South of France.”

“And you went to school?”

“Yes, and to Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob for the holidays.”

“Yes, she ran away from it,” thought the old man to himself, “just as I did. I was no better. The only difference between us was that she ran to the South of France and I to the south of Spain. We both ran away from doing the only thing that would have been of any use.

“And so you had a sad time of it at first, old man,” he said to the boy.

Adrian smiled. “Father used to call me Old Man,” he said.

“I hope you'll be like your father when you grow up,” said Oliver. “Your father
did
things instead of sitting still and thinking about them like the rest of us, or, worse still, running away from them because we daren't so much as think about them. When the war broke out and everybody thought that England was in danger, your father didn't sit still and chatter as we did. He simply joined the army, so as to be ready to meet the danger when it came. And it was the same when he was killed. Did you ever hear how he died?”

Adrian shook his head.

“Well, it was in the middle of a big advance. The Germans had built great concrete forts which we used
to call pill-boxes, in which they put machine-guns. The pill-boxes were so strong that our shells had little effect on them, and one of these pill-boxes was in front of your father's company and was holding up their advance. They had sent messages to the artillery to try to get our guns to destroy the pill-box, but the guns—they were only eighteen pounders—couldn't manage it, and time was precious. So your father and a sergeant volunteered to do it themselves, and they did it. They ran out, carrying a bomb or two, right in the teeth of the machinegun fire; the sergeant was hit before they were half-way there, but by a miracle your father reached the pill-box. They saw him throw a bomb into the entrance, they heard it explode, and then they saw him vanish into the entrance. Then there was another explosion. After that the pill-box was silent. Our men went forward, and when, a minute or two later, they reached it they found everyone inside it dead.”

“And Father too?”

“Yes, your father too. He didn't stop to talk and think, you see. He saw there was something quite simple to be done, so he went and did it. His Colonel told me that what he did certainly saved the lives of many of our men, besides clearing the way for the advance at a very critical moment. Your father didn't like war: he hated it. But he did the best thing he could have done, once the war had started. He didn't cry over spilt milk as some of us did: he simply set about cleaning it up. When I think of myself and thousands of other people sitting about the world in chairs, chattering like magpies, or everlastingly scribbling, or, worse still, thinking and thinking, round and round like empty windmills…”

The old man broke off with a sudden savage gesture, and with a deep sigh rose from the tea-table.

Within a few days of his arrival at Abbot's Randale, Adrian had lost all fear of his grandfather and they had become great friends. The old man showed him the room which had been his father's nursery, the bedroom he had had as a boy and a young man, the gun he had used as a boy, the one and a half pound trout he had caught at the age of sixteen and insisted on having stuffed and mounted in a glass case, and the pictures he had painted at various times of his childhood. And he took Adrian into his study and showed him treasures of his own: an ancient Chinese carving in flame-coloured jade of a horse lying down, its head alertly raised as if at a sudden noise; a pebble of opal as big as a walnut; a little vellum-bound book with jewelled clasps which had belonged to Mary Queen of Scots; a silver and enamel triptych of Byzantine workmanship, minute and gay as the illuminated page of a missal, and an ebony snuff-box inlaid with gold and silver which, his grandfather told him, was said to have belonged to the poet Pope. Adrian opened it: it was empty, but it gave out a queer, spicy smell like gingerbread. And after showing him all these things, the old man had taken him over to what seemed to be a coffin of polished and inlaid mahogany, set on a stand near the windows, and, opening a lid in its side, had revealed a small keyboard, the ivories worn hollow and tawny with age, the satinwood panel behind the keys inlaid with garlands of mother-o'pearl, and on a pearl shield in the centre the date 1775. On the wall above it in a black and silver frame hung a grim little picture in black. It was, it appeared, a portrait of a corpse, a gaunt, grinning, bearded face, hooded in grave clothes which were tied in an absurd topknot on the top of the head. Under it was written John Donne. Having studied it in horrified fascination for a moment, Adrian glanced down at the little piano again.

“Docs it play?” he asked, delighted: and, for answer, Oliver sat down, and a sweet, wiry sound, like the sound of a musical box, awoke under his touch.

Adrian loved music, and this music held him bewitched. “I know that,” he said when the piece was finished; “that's Handel.”

The old man turned and looked at him. “So you like music, do you?” he said, smiling with pleasure at the discovery. “Can you play yourself?”

“I can't play real pieces,” said Adrian, “but I play to myself. Mrs. Winser—our head-master's wife, you know—said I might play on their piano when they were out, because she knew I wanted to. She plays to us on Sunday evenings. She's very good. She plays Beethoven and Handel and Mozart and Chopin and … and lots of other things too.”

“And does she give you lessons?”

“She gives me one sometimes, because she knows I'm so keen on music, but I don't really
have
lessons, you know.”

“Would you like to?”

Adrian's face lit up. “Yes!” he said, as if he were being offered a priceless gift.

“Then you shall,” said his grandfather. “We'll arrange for you to start next term. Meanwhile you can play on this, whenever you feel like it. Just come in and start off. Don't bother about me, if I'm here. If I'm working and don't want you to play, I'll just say so. I'll say' Sorry, I'm busy!' and you can go away and try again later.”

And so during the rest of his visit Adrian played a great deal on the funny little piano: not a day passed on which he did not steal into the study and play over the four pieces he had invented during the last year at Waldo; and he invented other pieces too, which seemed
to him extraordinarily beautiful. Often as he played he glanced up at the grim, fascinating face of John Donne that hung on the wall almost on a level with his eyes. He was shy at first when he found his grandfather there, but the old man seemed so absorbed in a book or in writing letters that Adrian soon came to feel that he did not so much as hear him, and never suspected until just before the end of the holidays that he had been slyly listening. It was one afternoon when Adrian had finished playing and had just closed the lid of the piano. His grandfather, who was sitting at his desk, called to him. “Here,” he said, “here's something for you.”

Adrian took the sheets of music-paper which his grandfather was handing to him and glanced at the outer page. On it was written in a beautiful script, surrounded by scrolls and flourishes: “Four Pieces for the Piano, by Adrian Glynde.”

As he stared, still puzzled, at the page, his grandfather took the manuscript from him, went to the piano, and to Adrian's astonishment and delight played his own four pieces to him.

Adrian, back at school, became aware that life had grown wider and fuller. His visit to his grandfather had given him much to look back upon with pleasure and much to think about. He had the comforting assurance now that he had another home and another friend who reminded him often of his father. But against all this there was the knowledge that next term he would not return to Waldo, but would be plunged into the vast, hostile strangeness of Charminster. Charminster was now looming very large.

There was yet another impending event to which he looked forward half with eagerness, half with fear. Aunt Clara had written to tell him that he was to spend the first half of his summer holidays at Yarn and the second half at Abbot's Randale, and that while he was at Yarn his mother would be there. At last his hopes that she would come and see him were going to be realised. Over and over again he told himself so. “I'm going to see Mother,” he kept saying to himself, and each time he said it he was surprised to miss the thrill of happiness which he had always imagined such news would bring. Why was it that, mixed with his excitement at the prospect of seeing his mother after five years, he felt this curious fear, this curious impulse to run away and escape from it all? If Aunt Clara were to write again and say that his mother was not coming after all, he would, he knew, feel half relieved.

He had had no letter from his mother since the one he had received at Abbot's Randale, and in that one
she had said nothing of her coming to England. From Aunt Clara he had had the usual letters: she always wrote to him once a week during term time; and this term already he had had two long, wonderful letters from his grandfather which had pleased him more than any letters he had received. His mother's letters seemed to have no one at all behind them; in Aunt Clara's he found something, though not very much, of the real Aunt Clara; but in his grandfather's it seemed almost as if the old man himself were there talking to him. He carried them in his pocket, and often, when he had nothing to do, he took them out and read them over again.

As term slipped by, he realised for the first time how fond he had grown of Waldo; and now, just as he had begun to realise it, just as he had begun to feel thoroughly at home and happy there, he was going to leave it and start again, friendless and bewildered, as four years ago he had started here.

But when the end of term came and he bade good-bye to the boys and masters and Miss Egham, the matron, and the familiar rooms and garden, he was too excited at the prospect of the holidays and of going again to Yarn, where he had not been for seven months, to feel his departure very deeply, even though the fact that his mother would be at Yarn roused in him that strange feeling of shyness and tremulous misgiving.

From Waldo to Yarn was not a long journey. Adrian always arrived just in time for lunch, so that he always associated the arrival at his uncle's and aunt's with a special set of sensations, which were those of walking, with a nose keenly aware of the promise of good food, into the dining-room—a room which seemed, after the bare, unlovely dining-room at Waldo, marvellously fresh and beautiful with its large, shining windows, the silver shining on the polished sideboard, the gleaming
glass and silver on the snow-white tablecloth, and the comfortable glow of its brick-red curtains and carpet. How delightful it was to have left the cold asceticism of Waldo, to have a clean table-napkin and clean silver forks and spoons and bright knives to eat with, to see the beaming countenance of Uncle Bob on his left and the fine, thin face of Aunt Clara with its slightly sarcastic smile on his right, and to exchange the joyless routine of Waldo grub for the delicious surprises of meals at Yarn. And how delightful, sitting in the presence of all these well-loved and excellent things, to know that there was no afternoon school, no school to-morrow, nothing whatever to do, except what he wanted to do, for a month or six weeks.

But this time, as these familiar memories presented themselves to his mind for joyful anticipation as the train whirled him towards Yarn, the richness of their flavour was tempered by the thought of his mother—now, as he had only just realised she would be, so disturbingly unfamiliar. She would come to the station with Uncle Bob, no doubt, to meet him. How uncomfortable, how upsetting it would be, anyhow at first. With a sharp sting of internal panic he felt the familiar jolting of the points half a mile outside Yarn station, and next moment he saw the familiar farm, white among its tapering poplars, flash past on the left—that farm where, his uncle had once told him, a farm-labourer had murdered his master years ago. As the train ran into Yarn station he caught a glimpse of the old dark blue Fiat across the white railings. The driver's seat was empty: that meant that Uncle Bob was waiting for him on the platform. But inside the car a lady was sitting, and Adrian, with a sudden hurrying of the heart, told himself that it must be his mother.

A moment later he had given up his ticket and was
following Uncle Bob to the car. The door opened, and Adrian, bracing himself for the meeting, was enormously relieved to see Aunt Clara alone inside.

What had happened, he wondered, as they drove out of the station yard. Had his mother not come after all? Aunt Clara soon resolved his doubts.

“Your mother had a subsequent engagement, my dear—an irresistible invitation to a luncheon party. We felt we ought not to accept and she felt she ought not to refuse; so here we are, and there she is. She will be back to tea.”