Damage, page 9
‘Not a mournful scene,’ said Cyril, ‘a celebration. Then I remember Father saying, it was the passing of an age.’
*
Mention was made to the evening guests of our young Miss Glover’s studies, not of course in her presence. Schoolmaster Capleton was a fellow enthusiast for Waterhouse, he said; and for Tennyson, who had shifted away early from the Romantics with their shallow self-indulgence and given his talents and powers to the larger vision. Byron’s Childe Harold roamed Europe sating his thirsts; Tennyson’s Arthur and his knights sallied forth to right wrongs. A more responsible age was entered on, after the Georgian and the Regency. Thank her, Victoria, for that. And Albert – barely German, a Hanoverian.
‘To go before the war’s end – Waterhouse. Not knowing…’
It was acknowledged the outcome of the war lay as far from the reach of cold prognostication as a month ago, a year. Shortages at their worst ever. Vast enemy forces released from the eastern front, now that Russia was finally out, the refrain of “the Joy of Battle” unabated at Berlin. Yet our combined efforts of artillery, aircraft and tanks were now superior to anything the Germans could put together. And how soon would the Americans be in the field?
‘How soon indeed. Germany will push hard. Don’t doubt it.’
Cyril moved us on, with a chairmanly look. He laid firm hands on the jug and he dispensed more elderberry, his own brew, made very strong as substitute for the port wine, which was no honest cargo for shipping.
Mr Capleton was unhappy that Cyril gave the prosaic Hobbes all his attention and had not delved into John Dryden, who it seems had lived several months at our Charlton Park, the country seat of his wife’s family, in the plague year of 1665.
‘A tenuous connection, Harry. You’ll find no ripples of the Avon in Dryden. A city man, head and boots.’ Mr Lowe’s demeanour and speech were less grave than his fellow master’s, playfully waspish. And Cyril was too far into Hobbes to be diverted by the life and writings of a poetaster – no, in fact, Dryden became a substantial critic, insisted Mr Capleton, our literature’s first.
Cyril had found himself compelled to study in some depth the turbulent era in which Hobbes lived. ‘Do ever men think freely, aloof, detached from their own ills and times?’
‘Rarely,’ conceded Dr Lipscombe, with a physician’s sorrow.
‘Recall Pope…’ Mr Lowe allowed us a moment. ‘“We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow, our wiser sons no doubt will think us so.”’
Hobbes had learned from Thucydides, said Cyril, the lesson that demagogic orators are perilous to the people. Under a government stable and strong, under just laws justly upheld, the demagogue does not thrive; there is no discordancy to be seized upon, no mob anger to be raised to a heat. In giving us his social compact Hobbes may appear to be describing facts out of history, but he is not. He is playing the logician, projecting his thoughts from Euclid, the great discovery in his mental life, into human affairs…
‘Euclid has nothing on the sections of the cone,’ said Mr Capleton, ‘…oddly. So much in there – circle, ellipse, parabola.’
From the existence of the laws of geometry Hobbes attempts the deduction that laws of the commonwealth may be attainable, driven by his dread of anarchy, for its destruction of both the necessaries and the civilities of life. I suggested that Hobbes’s agnosticism, real or supposed, placed him close to the Ionian Greeks whose thinking proceeded on the assumption that the gods were separate entities from the material, from matter, and could not be used as explanatory forces. ‘Is law then man-made – or natural – or given of God? Cyril?’
‘What we have by nature comes from the Author of nature, was Hobbes’s position. He was too much maligned. He was no atheist, a Greek testament lay always on his table. So we may conjoin them, nature and God, on the Hobbesian view. The problem is not origins. It is, where ought sovereign power to reside? With monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy?’
My knowledge of Aquinas was too slender to be drawn upon and would likely have been an irrelevance. More sandwiches – laced with an extract that ‘“increases the value of other foods”’, read off Hetty from the jar – were a needful digression.
‘The law consists in words,’ stated Cyril. ‘Philosophers should commence their reasonings from that. The office choked with documents is a necessary evil on the High Streets–’
‘The law is golden, Cyril!’ Mr Lowe laughed around. ‘I leave it secured away in a strongbox and hope never to use it!’
‘Yes, special pleading, Cyril,’ cautioned Dr Lipscombe. ‘The mark of the professional man. We all do it, I fear.’
‘Absolutely not–’
Hetty this evening had said little, attentive to all and not least to me. Her interjection imposed a silence.
‘The Merchant of Venice is said to be about money – Jewishness – women’s stratagems. It’s about law.’
‘Oh yes!’ cheered Cyril.
‘Shylock knows well the importance of Venice’s laws. Probity underpins her trade, her prosperity. He legitimately plays on this. In common parlance the word flesh includes blood – did you ever see a piece of bloodless flesh? But common parlance is not the language of law, law is precise. Poor Shylock’s vengefulness dulls his wits. A man who insists he will have his bond, no matter what, should have marked what the bond precisely stated. A bond is words. Shylock overlooked that.’
And there was the difficult business of the daughter – Shylock’s treatment of Jessica, hers of him. But the hour was late for a matter so delicate to be broached and considered. They would be asked another time, Cyril, the others.
It was resolved that we should all go up to London for a performance the earliest opportunity, come the good day. I reflected that Trix would be old enough to accompany us and trusted that Catherine and Paula would not.
*
A man and his wife together may exert influence on a third individual, vaguely or obliquely, of which he is barely conscious; and they too, after years of close harmony, may be unaware of it. Or the influence will become overt and turn to evident and unashamed persuasion. Cyril would make a point, not overly emphatic; Hetty would concur whilst adding a particular, an if or two. The advertisement placed in the North Wilts Herald by Woolf Brothers of Swindon offered suits and overcoats made-to-measure at pre-war prices, which might be too good to miss, opined Cyril. Very true, chimed Hetty, if no quality suit or coat had been bought in many a season, mild or harsh, as was my case. It was Cyril’s case also, he confessed; we Glovers it seemed were a pair of gentlemen neglectful of our obligations to the tailoring trade. I said that I would go on my own, however. Cyril and Hetty should have a separate trip, without burden of brother, or children either. The Herald as much as said so: a sales event at McIlroy’s millinery salon and Eliza Comes to Town at the Empire Theatre. Our King’s Arms hotel engaged me a place in the tourer-car regularly hired from their associates at Swindon’s Rifleman Inn and I duly descended on the famous rail junction and began the process of sartorial indulgence. Swindon, I agreed on my return, could boast itself more than a big station passed through on the way from London, a further motor-ride to the town for fitting would be no hardship. Cyril and Hetty made their car booking, on the date of a school closure for staff matters, and they went off.
Trix had proposed, and required, that we four start our day with an hour of quiet reading in the parlour. Scanning Cyril’s shelves I declined Keble, though my theology might be in a state of disrepair, and took Buchan’s Prester John for its drama and with an eye to the concluding pages, at once worldly and sanguine. Trix opened her new Faerie Queene, which she expected to be quite magical and would not rush. Catherine and Paula fetched from their room a half-dozen books brimful of pictures and tales and rhymes. This was a sort of holiday and so there should be no dull schoolwork, declared Trix, projecting a sense of occasion. When rays of early March sunshine came in at the window the reading must be abruptly given over, for a first attempt at croquet. Our brisk inspection showed the lawn to be drying out well after a few days of light wind. It had been a long winter and we were all eager; hoops and mallets and balls were disencumbered from the summer house and I laid out the positions, as memory served.
The four of us fell naturally into two teams, Paula and myself as youngest and oldest, Catherine and Trix in between. Paula chose red and yellow balls, committing our opponents to the unexciting blue and black. A few strokes into the game Trix’s commentary, delivered for my benefit not least, presented a form of the rules in which the winning team was the one that passed soonest through all of the hoops, sequence being a superfluous notion. Given the slope of the lawn toward the river, slight but prevailing, and a hint of bumpiness, the simpler game was suited to the energies of the quick and lively. It may be that the great figures of the world spent their childhoods playing games on such ground, compelled to face and overcome every thrown-up challenge and so rising in adulthood to prominence and fame.
My walk along the High Street the previous day had been productive, of cakes and lemonade, pastries and fudge and chocolate. A strengthening of the breeze sent us happy and glowing indoors to enjoy labour’s reward. After nourishment, and mandatory rest, Trix read for us from The Water Babies. This would make three times, said Catherine, and they were nearly through again. One’s recollections of Kingsley’s mind at play bemused. There were spinning tops and marbles and ninepins, and sea-ices and sea-oranges. There was the salmon who looked as proud as Alcibiades, and the paper given by the professor at the British Association, and Hendrick Hudson who discovered the river and the bay. There were Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby and Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid – a startling sally into the niceties of ethics. As for the master-sweep Mr Grimes, so unkindly named, had he not himself climbed chimneys as a boy, and grown too thick as boys will, and so set up to employ others in the worthy trade? Condemned to sweep out the crater of Etna! It was a hapless fate. Kingsley’s academic fastness was maybe not the seat from which to view the rigours of business, however humorously, and to pass judgement.
‘Such interesting words,’ said Trix. ‘“The Waterproof Gazette – The Other-end-of-Nowhere…”’
‘That’s a silly place!’ laughed Paula. It was a signal to bring out the tric-trac, which meant the backgammon, reminded Catherine, for an uncle not always as swift in perception and response as the young.
‘I think we should let Trix go and read her book now,’ I said. She had work in plenty, with lunch a short hour away. So it was Paula and Catherine against myself, playing to Hetty’s rules, which I had learned were designed for such a threesome. I theatrically made a throw of the dice and had a four; Paula shook a two and Catherine a three, making five and giving them the start. The game progressed in similar fashion, the men moving from inner table to outer, and vice versa, points being rapidly gained. Confusion on my side was no excuse for dilatoriness. Very soon they had paraded every one of their men off the board and I had lost. My performance in the second game was no better, nor the third.
‘When Uncle Philip has had more practice,’ said Trix returning, ‘you must expect sometimes to lose.’
Excesses of cake mid-morning had caused Trix to alter her scheme. Lunch must be plain bread and butter and a glass of milk; the proper meal would be taken early evening. For the present there was conversation.
‘I choose horses,’ said Paula.
‘Uncle Philip should choose.’
‘Oh, I choose horses too, Catherine. My name means lover of horses, you know. From the Greek.’
‘Well, that’s not Trix…’
‘Horses are very useful, Catherine. I don’t care for them in paintings.’
It was remarked that no deliveries had been made today, of bread or vegetables or coal, in spite of the carrots made ready at the door. Neither had the postman called, in his smart uniform and on his tall bicycle, a long way to fall off, said Paula.
‘It’s a holiday!’ cried Catherine, and we all clapped her joke.
Carts having four wheels, we decided, were less likely to tip over than those having only two and, of course, could carry more goods. The front pair of wheels must be smaller than the back, so as to turn beneath the body of the cart for steering. Carts – or wagons, what is the difference? – with high sides were for carrying light hay or straw; heavy coal and potatoes come in a low small cart, especially as some of the carters had only a small horse, though very strong. Such vigorous debate, such excursions into the byways of knowledge, made thick slices of well-buttered bread very acceptable. After more rest, indeed a siesta, the children played hoop-la in the hallway while Trix and I talked of music. The company of Dale, Forty at Cheltenham offered in the Herald gramophones and double-sided records, and the Weber concert piano. Grandmother Whitmore’s old instrument, passed on to Hetty many years ago, had not responded well to the last tuning.
At four o’clock everybody sipped tea and the chocolate was shared around. Further reading, quite desultory, brought us to half-past five when the kitchen came into its own. I peeled and sliced parsnips, and chopped kale; and Trix made rissoles with maize and oatmeal, fried in block suet with a pinch of sauce powder. She took the horses’ carrots that were going limp and should be used. A professor at the Institute of Hygiene in London, she had read, advised that people would live longer if they ate more vegetables – if the nation made up its mind. Trix felt sure that he spoke truly and I topped up the saucepans and secured the lids as I heartily agreed.
*
A surprise visit by Hetty’s father, motoring from Devizes to Cirencester, presented me with figure and face not seen, hand not shaken, in quite some time. Mr Whitmore had borne the years well, as farmers do – ‘Gentleman-farmers, yes. And chaplains too, Philip.’ I quickly recalled his modest manner, which had been self-effacing to the point of apology: ‘Great-grandfather, bargeman; grandfather, lock-keeper; father, farmer. Myself, a gentleman, no less.’ It had been a plain and agreeable history to be told, inside an hour of my introduction by his newly betrothed daughter, Cyril at her side. The tale of the Whitmores, Henrietta had said, was of a piece with prosperous Devizes itself, chartered in the twelfth century, its arms a beflagged castle, its 1810 waterway matchless, by turns pretty and bold – ‘a continuous flight of seventeen locks, please believe, at Caen Hill.’
‘And a brewery five storeys high,’ her young brother Percy had put in. He was a singer of praises for the town no less ardent than Henrietta and had taken me about the streets with knowledge and good humour. The nearby villages too, we had cycled out and explored them, most especially Seend, four miles to the west, commanding a stony ridge where iron ore was quarried and transported for smelting to South Wales – as was the ore from Somerset’s Brendon Hills, I was able to tell him. And we discussed that strange and mystical, that historic substance, iron. We puzzled over the mariner’s lodestone and how iron becomes steel, and that oddest of the Iliad’s many oddities, the use of iron for common utensils while the heroes fight with weapons of bronze.
‘Away now, Percy?’
‘Egypt.’
As we humans were all declared fit and well the young Glovers must ask about the farm animals, some of whom had been out of sorts it appeared when Grandfather last came. They were now much better; they took medicine, of course, as we do. The lost calf had been found, by a not-so-silly goose who had gone out looking. The bull was as frightening as ever and not the least bothered at having no friends but a crow or two. No sheep still, no…
‘Their wool is nice, Paula, but they like to be out on the hills,’ said Trix. ‘Grandfather’s farm is all flat fields. He grows lots of greens and things.’ She asked about the mangolds and legumes, the rotation of crops. Mr Whitmore said that he now included grass leys in his system, one year in four. Grass had been much grown thirty or forty years ago, in response to the big shiploads of good quality wheat arriving from Canada and Australia. At present grass was less in favour, arable crops being so needed.
‘The sheep are welcome to have the hills,’ said Hetty. ‘Hills are pleasant to behold, in the distance.’ She reminded the company what a very difficult young woman she had been. ‘Malmesbury is an upside-down sort of town, I said. Houses should not be up on hills…’
‘So I found this place, on the river,’ Cyril smiled, at his father-in-law. ‘A mere two hundred feet above sea level, I submitted.’
‘You made out a good case, Cyril.’
‘I was my first client.’
And the old woods had been cleared, the lovely woods, with their bluebells and wild anemones? Trix was dismayed. Such magnificent oaks!
