A Man Over Forty (15 page)

Balintore spent an hour or more among these fascinating books – sampling each chapter, reading a couple of pages – but as if perplexed or embarrassed by such richness, bought none of them. Instead, in a remote corner where older volumes filled the shelves, he found a cheap edition of Bagehot's
English
Constitution
. Returning to his hotel, he read till lunch time, and then wrote a long letter; after which he took off his shoes and fell comfortably asleep.

Palladis returned with a vivid account of his adventures at Rockefeller Center, the Empire State building, Greenwich Village – ‘But it's nocturnal, it was aestivating' – and the United Nations. He had found the last-named the most interesting.

‘It was full,' he said, ‘of coloured people. And when I say “coloured” I mean, of course, what we call black, though few of them were absolutely black, any more than we're absolutely white. How horrible we should look if we were! But there they were, a teeming great excursion of black Americans from Detroit; though pilgrimage might be a better word. They took possession of the whole building, and I got the idea it had really been built for them, as a sort of temple where we paid the priests, and the priests were distributing the kingdoms of the earth among the people of the dispossessed and darker half of the world. And like a really good old-fashioned temple it had a bazaar attached to it. Down in the basement. And all those happy people from Detroit were buying souvenirs like mad, just as we used to do, many years ago, at Port Said. It's Simon Arzt on the East River, and chocolate heaven's the view from its top windows.'

They dined early, but not at the Hotel Henry James. After packing, Balintore grew restless and seemed nervously intent on leaving as soon as possible.

‘I thought you might want to see Louise again,' said Palladis.

‘You mean Nova. But no, that's the last thing I want. I've done all I can for her: I've written, at great length, and repeated what I told her yesterday. She's not a particularly clever girl, but she was well brought up – both of her parents staunch Wesleyans – and now, when she's in trouble of a spiritual sort —'

‘I should call it ethical.'

‘Spiritual or ethical, what the hell does it matter? Do you think she knows the difference? Of course she doesn't. But with her background she's more likely to believe a parson than
some damned head-shrinker who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. Who doesn't even know there is a difference! But that's what she wants to be told, and any parson who's worth his salt will take a positive relish in telling her.'

‘If she listens to him —'

‘She will.'

‘Though presumably she'll have to break up her partnership with Ingo Pomador – and she won't like the idea of living alone.'

‘It has occurred to me, since writing to her,' said Balintore, ‘that she may already have looked as far ahead as that; and if so, she may contemplate coming here for another talk. That's why I want to go now! So come along. We'll dine at Voisin's and come back here to pick up our luggage.'

Driving again through the dazzle of light on the many-laned highway to Idlewild, Balintore looked back again and again to see if they were being followed; and could not restrain some little exhibition of nervousness when he saw that several thousand motor-cars were pursuing them with what seemed a furious intensity. ‘They
may
all be occupied by total strangers,' he said. ‘They
may
all be going about their legitimate business, but it seems unlikely. No, I shan't be happy till we're in the air.'

At the airport, in the apparently witless concourse of incoming and out-going passengers, he continued to look on either side for those who might be dogging him – Nova, Pomador, or their emissaries – but when hatches were shut in the long aeroplane, and the menace of its engines shook its fragile sides, he leaned back in his seat, relaxed and easy of mind. Perhaps, thought Palladis, too easy. He appeared to be in a friendly mood, and Balintore's friendship was sometimes almost as embarrassing, to strangers, as his ill will.

The aeroplane was full, and they had both been given seats on the aisle; Palladis behind Balintore. On Balintore's inner side was a tall and burly man of noble aspect – bullnecked; heavily boned in forehead, nose, and jaw; tawny eyebrowed, bright blue of eye – who wore conservatively expensive New York clothes.

In the freedom of the upper air they fell into conversation as
soon as the stewardess brought them champagne cocktails – which appeared to be obligatory at a certain altitude – and Palladis, who had a good ear, heard much of their conversation. The name of Balintore's stalwart companion was Thor-grim Thorgrimsson, he was a third-generation American citizen, and he nursed a resentment against the government of the United States so bitter that he thought of renouncing his citizenship. He showed Balintore his passport and said, ‘When we get to London, I'm going to tear it up and put it down the can.'

This astonished Balintore, who with considerable eloquence began a laudation of the United States, and all its deeds and ideals, from the time of Jefferson onwards. But the more he praised the United States, the more forcefully did Mr Thorgrimsson denounce his country. He went so far as to compare it unfavourably with Great Britain, and with this comparison Balintore warmly disagreed.

He let a steward give him a slice of truffled pâté of fat liver and a glass of 1953 Léoville Poyferré, and said, ‘We all have our faults, but our faults – as a nation – are infinitely worse than yours.'

‘That I can't accept,' said Thorgrimsson. ‘I admire Britain —'

‘I adulate the United States!'

‘You in Britain invented all the good games in the world. And the rest of the world took your good games and turned them into bad professions.'

‘We lost supremacy in our good games because we're mentally flabby, and idle by habit. Now in the United States —'

‘What was invented for pleasure has been perverted into a quest for profit and prestige.'

‘Because you take things seriously —'

‘Only inessentials.'

‘You judge your country too harshly. But that's characteristic of American criticism. And of American humour. I've often said that no hostile country need ever burden itself with schemes or policies to destroy America: it should subsidize American comedians, and they would do the job quicker than anyone else.'

‘We've lost our old spirit of independence,' said Thor-grimsson glumly. ‘We've thrown away the traditional freedom of the individual. And that's why I'm not going back.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘To the town where my grandfather was born. That's Akureyri in Iceland.'

‘Won't you feel the cold?'

‘It's a sun-trap in summer, and in winter no colder than Wisconsin.'

After supper had been served, a steward brought brandy, and Balintore and Mr Thorgrimsson discussed in some detail the history and state of Iceland. Palladis still listened, but ceased to worry when their talk turned to the incidence of volcanic eruption and the price of fish. They, and he, presently fell asleep and slept till their cabin filled with the intrusive light of a molten sun that appeared to have risen out of Bantry Bay.

A stewardess brought coffee and tea, and Balintore and Mr Thorgrimsson woke to the realization that an overnight debate had not been concluded. They washed and shaved in a narrow aluminium stall and then, refreshed, resumed their argument.

‘You've maintained your principles – kept them cleaner – than we have,' said Balintore. ‘You cherish illusions, that I admit, but you haven't lost sight of principles. Now we in Britain used to have a name for honesty, but what's it worth today? Our parliament sanctions retrospective legislation, and that's dishonesty at the very root of things. Our Trade Unions clamour for higher wages, and our workmen scamp their work!'

‘You've suffered many casualties,' said Mr Thorgrimsson. ‘Casualties that deserve our deepest sympathy. In two great wars —'

‘The first was grotesquely mishandled, the second unnecessary. And in both of them the United States intervened to save us alive.'

‘The United States wouldn't exist today if it weren't for the United Kingdom! It was your money, in 1914, that made us a world power, and your money in 1939 hat pulled us out of slump and depression and made us the richest country on earth. We owe it all to you!'

‘That may be so,' said Balintore, ‘but it doesn't alter the fact that in both those wars the United States brought victory home to us. By the massive weight of your irresistible power!'

‘If it hadn't been for you,' said Mr Thorgrimsson, ‘there wouldn't have been a war for us to win! Neither in 1918 nor in 1945. It was you kept it going for us.'

‘Historically speaking —'

‘Historically speaking,' said Mr Thorgrimsson warmly, ‘we've got to thank you for both those wars. Yes, sir.'

‘And what did we gain from them?' asked Balintore.

‘Nothing,' said Mr Thorgrimsson. ‘Nothing at all.'

‘Whose fault was that?'

‘Ours. That was our fault. Our strategy was narrow-minded, politically obtuse, and basically wrong.'

‘We never presented a clear-cut image of what we were fighting for.'

‘And we failed to achieve it because we were too God-damned suspicious of your intentions.'

‘And how right you were! We wanted to maintain the power and prestige of the British Empire —'

‘And what better cause could you have had? The British Empire,' said Mr Thorgrimsson with great passion, ‘stood for sanity and civilization!'

‘It stood for the maintenance of an archaic and impermissible difference between ourselves and the ancient societies of Africa and the Far East,' said Balintore.

‘I revere your Queen,' said Mr Thorgrimsson.

‘I respect your President,' said Balintore.

‘I voted against him,' said Mr Thorgrimsson.

‘You were wrong,' said Balintore.

‘No, sir.'

‘I say you were.'

‘Are you trying to teach me my democratic duty – you the representative of an outworn feudal system – do you think you can tell a free-born American citizen how to discriminate between the two great political parties which God created in the United States – one of which is manifestly right and the other demonstrably in error?'

‘I am giving you,' said Balintore, ‘an opinion which has
been moulded by a thousand years of democratic experience. We in Britain are the senior representatives of government by law and democratic practice —'

‘No!' said Mr Thorgrimsson. ‘We in Iceland have the oldest parliament of all.'

‘Which does nothing but talk about the price of fish.'

‘While your parliament talks in its sleep about dead issues!'

Their argument, which had become confused, was interrupted by the serving of breakfast, but woke again as they went into a cloud on their approach to London Airport. Then, resuming his original theme, and praise of Britain, Mr Thorgrimsson spoke of the sympathy Britain had shown to newly emergent sentiments of nationalism in Africa. ‘That,' he declared, ‘is a true manifestation of your political genius. You in Britain have always been aware of the changing temper of the world. You led the way to the abolition of slavery —'

‘In fact,' said Balintore, ‘what happened was that we lost the will to rule, the will to dominate. India's demand for freedom, and the innumerable demands of Africa, all came later than Britain's own renunciation of empire. Do you know the meaning of
aboulia?'

‘Of what?'

‘Aboulia,' said Balintore.

Further discussion was, for a little while, postponed by a sudden change in the tone of the engines, by a jolting, see-saw movement of the aeroplane, and a glimpse through its windows of a dark gulf in the clouds and beyond it a graver darkness like an apparent cliff. The aeroplane dropped – but its fall was arrested – and Balintore, gripping tightly the narrow arms of his chair, felt his palms grow sticky and a slight constriction of his chest impeded the natural regularity of his breathing. Then through the outer gloom there appeared the roofs and rectangular array of some suburban settlement – the dark elbow of a sullen river – and here and there the shrinking green of diminishing fields. The aeroplane tilted, swung sharply away from its previous course, and the pale brick houses of a larger settlement showed more clearly on the other side.

A few minutes later a broad runway leaned up towards
them, pocked with rain, and Balintore felt an irrational anger against the island which covered itself with such unnerving clouds, and gave its visitors – and its returning natives – no better welcome than cold, umbrella-black, shoe-soaking weather.

As they ran slowly towards the airport buildings, and he realized that he was safely home, his anger found a harsh, intemperate voice, and he said, ‘The word I used was “aboulia”, which means absence of will, lack of guts, the decay and decline of volition. And that's the disease this country is suffering from. We call it tolerance, and pretend it's a virtue, but the truth is that we put up with every sort of iniquity at home, and all manner of insults abroad, because we've lost vitality, we don't care, and we're too near death to feel. We're like bums in the Bowery. Bums in the Bowery of the world!'

At this scurrilous aspersion on Great Britain, Mr Thorgrimsson's indignation was so profound – and his muscular strength so exceptional – that in his effort to release himself from his seat-belt he tore it from its moorings; and standing up, hit his head against the sloping luggage-shelf above him. He loomed above Balintore with a menacing fist. ‘That is an intolerable and unforgivable libel!' he shouted. ‘I admire Great Britain, I applaud your history, I revere your Queen —'