Friends and Lovers (3 page)

Fenton-Stevens says it was always wild land, only gooc for grouse and deer.

True, you can’t do much with mountain; except admire them or climb them. But where there an mountains there must be valleys. And where there are valley: there could be good roads and small towns and light industries When we motored from Glasgow to Loch Innish wi passed enough torrents and waterfalls to give electric powe: to the whole of Scotland. Then why aren’t there electric rail ways opening up the whole place? They’d bring more that they would take away: they don’t have to make a place ugly I’m thinking of Switzerland, you see.” He stopped abruptly, aware that he was perhaps suggesting something that Dr. MacLntyre would deplore. Many people, even Scotsmen, would be annoyed by such an idea.

Dr. MacLntyre was watching him with interested eyes. He said nothing, as if he were waiting for David to go on. And David realized that Dr. MacLntyre’s surprise was not caused by any new ideas that had been presented to him, but by the fact that David—an Englishman—had actually thought of them.

But David didn’t speak. He was telling himself gloomily that whatever he could say about the Highlands—their neglect for almost two hundred years, the fact that as far as they were concerned the Industrial Revolution or the prosperity of the nineteenth century might never have existed in the British Isles, the lack of any large-scale plan with real determination behind it—well, Dr. MacLntyre had already thought of all these things. Anything David said might only look as if he were trying to show off in front of Dr. MacLntyre.

Perhaps he had been enjoying that moment too much, when he felt he had captured Dr. MacLntyre’s attention. Yet it was more than that. He glanced sharply at Dr. MacLntyre to see if there was any trace of amusement in his eyes.

“Of course,” David said, *I should admit that I never even thought about all this until I came to visit this part of the world.”

Dr. MacLntyre looked at David thoughtfully. Visitors usually accepted what they saw and asked no questions. Either they praised the scenery and the beauties of the simple life—and then after three or four weeks they went home to modern conveniences—or they remarked how isolated and desolate it all was, how very primitive, and never stopped to wonder why. I have a weakness, Dr. MacLntyre thought, for young people who ask an intelligent why.

He laid his hand on David’s shoulder and said, “I have something here that might interest you.” He led him to a bookcase, with more photographs and snapshots placed on its top. He chose one and handed it to David. It was a group of young men in the dress of forty years ago.

Do you know anyone there?” he asked.

“I’ll give you a clue. It was taken in our last year at Balliol.”

David recognized MacLntyre’s direct eye, strong nose, and determined jaw line. But Walter Chaundler was not so easj to find.

David’s unsuccessful attempts amused Dr. MacLntyre “There he is!” He pointed to the most elegant young blad( of them all.

“Of course, the photograph hasn’t lasted ver} well.” He examined its yellow, faded surface.

“We all look ai if we were giving imitations of William Toll’s son mixed witt Oscar Wilde.”

“And a touch of George Washington after he cut down the cherry-tree,” David suggested.

“After he confessed,” Dr. MacLntyre emended. They bott looked at the photograph and laughed in agreement.

“It is i nice old horror,” MacLntyre said affectionately, as he replacec it carefully in its exact place on the bookcase. David was thinking of Walter Chaundler.

He was remembering the quiet thin face, imperceptible in a crowd, vague even to the pupil! he tutored. David glanced towards the photograph again, and felt a sense of depression. On the surface Chaundler’s was more successful life compared to that of the man who had suddenly retired to the simplicity of this island. On the surface … but the photograph pointed him out quite clearly a; the less successful man. Perhaps not in his career; but some how, some way, in himself.

David said slowly, “Strange how one changes.”

MacLntyre seemed to read his thoughts.

“If I were a young man again there is one bit of advice I would like to get.” H( paused then and smiled.

“Now that’s an old man talking, il ever I heard one.” “What would that be, sir?” David asked.

“Well,” Dr. MacLntyre said, ‘a man’s life is divided into twc parts: there is his work and there is his own private life. Twc small worlds which he has to make for himself. And it is onl} when he is old, and the time for decision is over, that he ma} realize he did not need to neglect one for the other.

For if h( concentrated too much on one of them, then he really con fused their purpose. He had thought that either a successfu career was life, or life itself was a career. He hadn’t realizec that his work and his own private life should be given the same amount of thought, and they should grow along will each other, each influencing the other, each developing the other.

Without that balance he will find himself an incomplete man. That’s the tragic thing about age: to realize yoi have somehow never seen what is happiness until it was toe late to start building it up. For it has to be built. Pleasure is a simple thing: you can choose it, buy it, even have it as a gift. It only depends on your taste. But happiness is much more complicated: you have got to build it yourself.”

“But what about the uneven start in life?” David asked.

“Oh, I know that even those who get that head start have to work pretty hard if they want to achieve anything for themselves. But–-” He paused. That was cold consolation. You might have contempt for those who depended on their father’s name or their grandfather’s money—the ‘borrowers,” you could call them—but they still had an easier time of it, even in the smallest things. They could go to a concert, buy a ticket for a theatre or a copy of a book they wanted, without having to miss lunch for the next three days to pay for each of these pleasures. Yet even the man who could make the choice of feeding his mind and starving his body was lucky in his way: he had his head start too over those who had to starve both mind and body. There were plenty of them. Too many … David stared angrily out at the blue sea with its rim of clear bright green.

“But it is the small worries that all link up to form a chain round your ankles. It isn’t easy that way. And if a man manages it in spite of all the handicaps, he gets more sneers than praise. We all make jokes about the self-made man; you’d think in Britain that the wealthy families had never been nouveaux riches at one time too. If snobbery is as important as we assume it is, then we should be quite thorough about it. If it is age and custom that count, then the descendant of the Saxon manor-house, who is called plain “Mr.’, is certainly more noble than any of the family of a fifteenth century earl. Our mental habits are ludicrous.

And damned unfair. Sorry, sir. But that is how it looks to me.”

Dr. MacLntyre said, “I used the same sentence many a time.” The past tense was definite. There was kindliness and understanding in his eyes. He seemed to be telling David to accept the unfairness and the inequalities, not as a proof that difficulties were too big ever to be overcome, but rather as a challenge which, if well met, promised its own private reward. It was the inner success—the sense of striving for completeness—and not the outward signs of success, which really mattered.

In that moment a lot about Dr. MacLntyre became clear to David.

And then the door opened. Mrs. Lorrimer, Dr. MacTntyre’s daughter, came once more into the room. She had the same expression of worry on her face with which she had welcomed Fenton-Stevens and David this afternoon when they had first arrived.

“That boat is in sight, Father,” she said warningly. She was middle-aged, tall, and thin, with her fading blonde hair caught in a heavy knot at the back of her head. Her blue eyes had faded, too, and so had her skin. There was the same bleached vagueness about her whole appearance. She was dressed in brown. She always dressed in brown because she had been told at the age of twenty how well she looked in brown. David couldn’t know that, of course.

All he knew was that her dress was very correct, very safe, and dull enough to be very expensive. She looked old, he decided, to be the mother of the three young children on the mantelpiece.

Ts it, Mary?” Dr. MacLntyre said, refusing to be hurried. On a clear day like this the little steamer which brought mail, merchandise, livestock, and occasional passengers to the various islands could be seen miles away. There was no need to get worried about it.

“Where’s Fenton-Stevens?” he asked.

“I thought he was with you in the garden.”

“That was a long time ago.” There was a note of remonstrance in the cool, precise voice.

“Eventually,” it went on, “Mr. Fenton-Stevens went over to explore the west shore with the children. I’ve been reading upstairs.” Somehow there was a slightly complaining effect, just a touch of self-pity, in the way she phrased her words. But Dr. McLntyre either ignored or preferred not to notice.

“How nice,” he said.

“The rest would do you good, Mary.”

His daughter did not acknowledge that probability. Father, she decided, was having one of his annoying moods.

“Have you that letter ready for the boat, or can it wait until next week?” she asked.

“The boat won’t arrive for another hour, Mary. I have plenty of time.”

“I told the children to be sure to return for the boat,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.

“They can take the letter down to the jetty, and perhaps Angus will slip it into the post-bag for you.”

“He always does,” her father said genially.

“We’ve a damned good postman here, Bosworth. He never breaks a rule because he has never made any.” David saw Mrs. Lorrimer flinch slightly at her father’s choice of adjectives. But its purpose was achieved: no further suggestions were made to plague Dr. MacLntyre. And having established his own un flustered world again the old man turned towards his desk with a glint of humour in his eyes and picked up his pen.

“I’ll join you later,” he said to David.

“Have a look at the hollyhocks.”

That sounded a very pleasant way of spending half an hour. But unfortunately Mrs. Lorrimer was a very polite hostess, and insisted on accompanying David towards the garden.

Chapter Three.

MRS LORRIMER REGRETS.

Dr. MacLntyre’s house had been originally a row of three small cottages. The thick walls had been kept, the unnecessary doors had been plastered over, the windows had been enlarged and given shutters for protection in the winter, and a deep-gabled slate roof had been substituted for thatch. It stood very white and brightly smiling in the sunshine. A grey stone wall had been built across a short field to join the southwest corner of the house at right angles, and within the sheltered crook of this arm a garden had come to life.

Here all the warmth in the air was trapped and held, and the hollyhocks grew.

David looked out over the bleak hillsides and then back at this smiling corner.

“How remarkable to see anything growing except heather,” he said.

Mrs. Lorrimer seemed hardly to notice the pleasure of the soft green grass underfoot. She ignored the excellent crop of vegetables, and looked critically at a rose-bush which showed symptoms of withering.

“It is very limited gardening, of course,” she said.

“There are so many things that simply refuse to grow here.” She sounded as if it were necessary to concentrate on what couldn’t be grown in the garden, rather than on the things that could. David wondered if her garden at home could grow bananas or coconuts, and if it could not, did that prove it was not a very good garden.

“Fine crop of hollyhocks,” he said tactfully.

Mrs. Lorrimer looked frowningly at their bright reds and pinks, glowing with all the warmth and life of a Renoir painting.

“It is so very odd,” she said almost apologetically, ‘that Father ever came back here.”

“Perhaps he likes living here.”

“But he is so out of touch with everything.”

David thought of the room which they had just left.

Mrs. Lorrimer’s exact voice continued, “We thought he should retire to some place near us in Edinburgh. My husband is a Writer to the Signet there, you see.” There was a slight pause to allow that fact to sink in.

“Edinburgh really would have been much more of a spiritual home to him. Or Oxford.”

David had flinched at the phrase. He said quickly, “I’ve always thought that a—a spiritual home is just not a matter of geography.”

He cleared his throat nervously, and was thankful that none of his Oxford friends had heard him use the phrase.

“You mean, it does not matter where one lives?” Mrs. Lorrimer was shocked: she was probably thinking of Glasgow, “Emotionally or physically, yes. We all feel happier or less happy in certain places. But if there is any spiritual home, surely it is what we have collected inside our own heads?

After all, Descartes thought out half of his philosophy when he spent a day in a Bavarian stove.

And he lived much of his life in foreign armies, although he wasn’t at all warlike. I don’t think he would call the stove or the barracks his spiritual home: they were just places that suited him for examining his own thoughts.

He didn’t have to talk to people there, I suppose.” Now, he thought, let’s drop all this stuff about spiritual homes and enjoy the garden instead.

“Really!” Mrs. Lorrimer murmured. Inside a stove—but how ridiculous.

Was he being facetious? Surely he didn’t mean that people who talked of spiritual homes had few resources inside their own minds? She stared at him blankly. He was looking now at the row of hollyhocks against the wall, his hands deep in the pockets of his grey flannel trousers. She admitted with a certain amount of effort that he was not disagreeable to look at. He was tall, and carried himself well.

Even when he was standing negligently, as he was at this moment, he did not slouch. He wasn’t handsome like George Fenton-Stevens, of course, just as he had not his charm of manner either. Grey eyes under strong eyebrows. Black hair, thick and rather too long, but then barbers were difficult to find in this part of the world. A mouth which was pleasant enough when it smiled, but it seemed to fall naturally into a firm line. Rather too strong a face, Mrs. Lorrimer’s taste decided as she completed her inventory. Still, he was not unattractive. Mrs. Lorrimer determined to try again.