A Man Over Forty (16 page)

A stewardess, with the gentleness of assured authority, said ‘Will passengers please keep their seats until the aeroplane comes to a halt before the main airport buildings.' And Mr Thorgrimsson immediately obeyed. But when the tall ramp of the gangway was brought to an open hatch, and he and Balintore emerged together into English rain, he spoke with the rumbling fury of a volcano stirring to life. ‘I give you a last chance,' he said, ‘to withdraw that vicious, abominable, and lying statement —'

‘Don't be a fool,' said Balintore, and descended a couple of steps.

‘Before you set foot on English soil – the soil of Magna Charta – you're going to apologize for a contemptible slander!'

‘Go to hell,' said Balintore, and went a little farther down the steps.

Mr Thorgrimsson put out a large hand to seize him by the
collar, and Balintore, half-turning, struck it away. But he nearly lost his balance, and saved himself from falling only because Mr Thorgrimsson offered a clumsy, swinging blow, and Balintore was able to grab his wrist. By so doing he pulled the Icelander towards him, and together they fell sprawling down the gangway on to the hard concrete skin that covered the nearer parts of English soil.

There were, unfortunately, photographers present. A young French film-star and a South American diplomat were also aboard the aeroplane and the editors of the more popular newspapers hoped to show their arrival, arm-linked, together. But the photographers immediately recognized Balintore, and took many pictures of his unseemly struggle with Mr Thorgrimsson. The afternoon papers announced his return to England with manifest pleasure and facetious captions.

As Palladis went up the steps at the piccadilly entrance to Albany, a tall top-hatted porter emerged from his lodge to say, ‘Good morning, sir. I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Mr Balintore went out in a great hurry just half an hour ago.'

‘Did he say where he was going, or when he would be back?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Well, that's a little odd. He knew I was coming.'

‘Yes, sir. I was rather surprised myself.'

‘Did he seem quite normal?'

‘He was hatless, sir – though it looks like more rain – and wearing slippers.'

‘Oh, dear!'

‘On the other hand, it may be a good thing that he's plucked up enough courage to go out.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘For the last three days, he's been sitting in there, afraid to stir.'

‘In a state of siege. But Albany can stand a siege.'

‘We don't let undesirables come in. But we've had a lot of trouble with the press: they all wanted to see him.'

‘It was a pity that he made so spectacular a return.'

‘It's Mr Balintore's way, to be spectacular, isn't it? But I don't hold that against him. I think highly of Mr Balintore, and I'm very fond of him too.'

‘Though he's given you more trouble than all the other tenants put together.'

‘They're pretty quiet nowadays, that's true, but they weren't always so well conducted. And I think it makes a nice change to have someone like Mr Balintore living here; it's like a link with the past.'

‘Well, I'll go in and wait for him, if you don't mind. I've got my key.'

‘Yes, sir, and when he comes back I'll tell him you're here.'

Palladis went through the guarded entrance, and slowly along the Rope Walk between the cloistral chambers on either hand. He stood aside to let an elderly, unsteady baronet go by – a baronet who was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a convert to Bahaism – and took off his hat to Dame Ethelinda Rooke; who smiled charmingly but failed to recognize him. He turned and climbed three shallow stone steps to Balintore's chambers – the outer door stood open – and let himself in.

The sitting-room was furnished, a little too deliberately, in a late Victorian fashion, and on the walls hung large and rather dull paintings by Herkomer, Maclise, and Augustus Egg; a great disarray of newspapers, scattered over a table, a long sofa and the floor, seemed a very vulgar intrusion on such formality. In a small dining-room breakfast-dishes still stood on the table, and in Balintore's bedroom – that three abstract paintings too assertively decorated – his bed was unmade. In the bathroom a crumpled copy of the
New Statesman
lay half-covered by a damp towel.

Palladis returned to the sitting-room and took a cigarette from an ostentatious silver box. He may be recovering, he thought, or he may – God help him if he is! – he may be on his way to Reykjavik with Thorgrimsson.

The rough-and-tumble at London Airport had been explained
away, more or less convincingly, by a joint declaration from Balintore and Mr Thorgrimsson, that their fall had been caused by the giddiness consequent on a rough approach; and Palladis, Balintore, and Mr Thorgrimsson had all driven to Albany where, to Palladis' distress, Balintore and his Icelandic friend had drunk, within three or four hours, three or four bottles of champagne, while Palladis and the porters had resisted the efforts of eighteen or twenty reporters and photographers to gain admission and interview them.

Balintore and Thorgrimsson had easily repaired their quarrel, and found a deeper source of friendship when it transpired that Mr Thorgrimsson's dissatisfaction with the United States was of recent origin, and easy to understand. It was due solely to the fact that he had lately bought a property in Delaware from owners domiciled in Brazil, and sold it to a company in Caracas at a considerable profit which he had successfully deposited in Switzerland; and was now, quite unreasonably, being dunned by the United States Government for tax amounting to $947,000. Resenting this demand, and while the case was still
sub judice
, he had decided to forfeit his citizenship and retire to live in Akureyri. Balintore, to begin with had applauded his decision, and almost decided to join him in sub-arctic freedom. But after their fourth bottle of champagne Mr Thorgrimsson had shown signs of melancholy, and retired to sleep for a few hours in Balintore's spare room.

He had wakened to sadness and remorse, and to comfort him Balintore opened a bottle of brandy: a robust and fortifying Armagnac. Under its influence they recovered faith in each other's country – Balintore in the United States, Mr Thorgrimsson in the United Kingdom – and before the bottle was empty had affirmed their indissoluble alliance. This discovery of an essential union stiffened Mr Thorgrimsson's reverence for the Queen, and strengthened Balintore's devotion to the President. He looked with admiration at Thorgrimsson's heroic stature, and decided that he was an asset too valuable for the alliance to lose.

‘America needs you!'he said. ‘You can't desert America for the sake of a paltry million dollars!'

‘I'm beginning to think you're right,' said Mr Thorgrimsson; and quietly began to cry.

‘Not for all the fish in Reykjavik.'

‘You're right, you're Goddamned right. But England's always right! We ought to listen to you, ought to take your advice!'

‘Not always,' said Balintore.

‘Well, sometimes.'

‘Yes, sometimes. Even if we can't help ourselves, we'd like to help you,' said Balintore; and moved by some strange emotion, pulled out his handkerchief to wipe tears from his own eyes.

In the early evening they had helped Mr Thorgrimsson along the Rope Walk, and the porter had called a taxi which took their guest to the Dorchester Hotel. Since then they had heard nothing of him, and Balintore had spent the following day in bed, tormented by a catastrophic hangover and fear of the outer world.

Reporters, photographers, emissaries from the B.B.C. and the independent television companies, continued to call, and extravagant offers were made for an interview, for the story of his temporary exile in Jamaica, for an explanation of his quarrel with a fellow passenger in the aeroplane; and though all were refused, and all attempts at invasion repelled, Balintore in the misery of his hangover was tortured by fears of the beleaguering world that was trying to pierce his defences and stretch him on the rack of intolerable questioning.

He woke, feeling better, on the third day of his return, but still refused to go out. Palladis spent a couple of hours with him, and tried to persuade him to take a walk. The weather had improved and the sun was shining. ‘Round St James's Park and back through the Green Park,' said Palladis. ‘No farther than that. It will do you good.'

‘No,' said Balintore. ‘Wherever I go I attract attention; and my only wish is to avoid attention.'

‘You could do that if you behaved more sensibly.'

‘It's not as easy as you think. No, it goes deeper than that. They're after me—'

‘Who?'

‘All the malignancies of the world! I've been a fool, and the ghosts of folly wear black and wait for you like footpads in the dark. Oh, let's have another drink.'

Palladis had a problem of his own that he wanted to talk about, but in Balintore's present mood he realized it was useless to broach it. He wanted to go to Ireland, and his mother had urged him to be selfish. ‘A proper degree of selfishness has never done anything but good,' she said. ‘You tell me that he has a good daily woman who can cook him a simple meal, and what more does he need? You must be firm and say that you want a month's holiday.' But the time was not propitious for such a demand.

It was on the following day – the fourth day after their return – that he called again and heard, to his surprise, that Balintore had gone out. He waited in Balintore's sitting-room, and when Balintore's daily woman came in, belatedly, to make his bed and clear his breakfast-table, he listened with a renewal of interest – he had often talked with her before – to her warm expression of admiration for her employer.

‘It isn't everyone who'd put up with him, I know that,' she said, ‘but I dote on him, I really do! A man who doesn't give a shake of a bat's tit for anyone – if you'll excuse my language, well, my husband's a sailor, and I'm used to worse than that – a man like him, you take a pleasure in working for, though he's a bloody nuisance often enough – there I go again! – but think of all the dreary ones, all those with enough money to raise hell twice a week, but just don't want to – they're the sort that I can't stand – but Mr Balintore, well, you can hear him arguing with the best in the land, and telling them where they're wrong, and the next morning, as like as not, he'll still be in bedat eleven o'clock, with a splitting head and quoting dirty French poetry, and shouting for the alka-seltzer. Well, that's human!

‘Oh, I like him! And then the words he uses! Mind you, I know a lot of words myself, because I read books, but Mr Balintore – well, he spills them as if he'd forty thousand more and didn't need to economize. And I like that. I like a man who doesn't give a damn, and speaks like he was tearing up a dictionary that no one ever was going to need any more.

‘We have our tiffs, of course – we have our tiffs and rows from time to time – but when he says, “Be damned to you, Mrs Bint, if you don't want to work for me, go and work for the Archbishop of Canterbury” – well, I just say, “I know my nature, Mr Balintore, and I'm a woman of your kidney, not his. I'd feel out of my depth in Lambeth Palace” – and that's why I'm still here. And now, Mr Palladis, what would you like for your lunch? Mr Balintore's got an account with those big grocers just across the street, and anything you want, I can nip over and get it for you.'

Her belief in Balintore's splendid indifference to the world had very little substance, thought Palladis; but it was widely held and accounted for much of his popularity. It would be idle cruelty to tell her the truth about him, and probably a waste of time.

He ate the lunch she brought him, and wrote a few letters. He looked for a book and found Italo Svevo's
As a Man Grows Older
. He was still reading it when, at five o'clock, Balintore came in, his shoulders darkened by rain and his slippers sodden by wet pavements. He kicked them off, and warmed his feet at an electric heater which unsuccessfully imitated a coal fire.

‘I couldn't get a taxi,' he said. ‘I had to walk.'

‘Where from?'

‘Brown's Hotel. I went to see Polly Newton.'

‘How is she?'

‘Well enough, so far. But I'm not happy about her.'

‘What's been happening?'

‘She rang up this morning to say that her employer had gone off to Newcastle, to look at a house in Northumberland.'

‘I like Northumberland. I used to stay with people – very rich then, but not now, alas – in a house called Northern Court.'

‘That's where he's going.'

‘It's a vast house with a fabulous collection of all manner of things from Chinese pots and porcelain to Italian Primitives. But they have to sell, I hear.'

‘Evershrub has gone to see what there is, of the sort he
wants, before the sale. The sale's advertised for the week after next. But I wouldn't be surprised if he's preparing a retreat, a hiding-place – Northumberland's discreetly far away – and the next thing on his programme is seduction under the Roman Wall.'

‘Is that what Polly's afraid of?'

‘No, of course not. She has no notion of the danger she's in. But she doesn't want to stay at Brown's all alone. She's talking of going to a married sister in Islington.'

‘I doubt if it's any safer than Northumberland.'

‘I told her to wait a day or two – “Don't be in a hurry, “Isaid – because I think this may be my opportunity.'

‘Now look here, Ned—'

‘I know what you're going to say.'

‘You can't afford to get married again.'

‘I have no intention of getting married. I've had some experience of marriage – I've made a patient, thorough examination of marriage – and I know that it doesn't suit a man of my sort. I doubt if it suits any man. It helps to keep women off the streets, but apart from that there's not much to be said for it.'