Honeybath's Haven (5 page)

He didn't look up until the train was hurtling through Ealing Broadway. What he then saw startled him considerably. His fellow-traveller had opened the suitcase, which could be glimpsed as containing a variety of gleaming metallic objects not immediately to be identified. But from among these had evidently come something that the elderly man was now gripping firmly in his mouth. It was a slender dagger of the most sinister appearance. And the muscular effort required for this unnerving performance had the effect of contorting his features into a ferocious
rictus
the impact of which was momentarily enhanced by a glance that could be described only as wild and glaring.

Honeybath wasn't the less alarmed through his having seen something of the sort before. There are Japanese actor prints in which ferocious persons thus exhibit themselves as literally armed to the teeth. But this didn't at all explain the appearance of a similar phenomenon in an English railway-carriage.

‘I do beg your pardon.' The elderly man, who had necessarily unmouthed the dagger to achieve this articulateness, smiled disarmingly. ‘And I wonder whether you are interested, sir, in this kind of thing? Yesterday, I am delighted to say, I made a most successful raid on Sotheby's.'

‘A raid?' It was with a natural alarm that Honeybath repeated the word.

‘One of my regular forays, my dear sir. Once or twice I may have bid a shade injudiciously. But I was well satisfied in the end.'

‘I am delighted to hear it. Did your purchases include that – um – poniard?'

‘Panzerbrecher
– if you will forgive the correction. But indeed yes. I have been looking out for one for a long time. Its use, as you know, was to penetrate the joints of the armour of an unhorsed opponent. It thus belongs co the general category of the
misérecorde
, the name by which is denominated any weapon designed to administer the
coup de grâce
– or, alternatively, to thrust sufficiently far and painfully into an adversary's person to educe a plea for mercy. But my chief prize yesterday was a more complex weapon of the same sort, at one time much in use by the emissaries of the Fehmic Courts – or the
Vehmgerichte
, which you will recall as the uncorrupted term. And here it is.' The elderly man rummaged in his suitcase and produced another small dagger. ‘It had, of course, the same function. Only here is a spring one may release with the thumb. Pray watch the blade.'

Honeybath watched the blade, although without enthusiasm. He saw it instantly transform itself into three more slender blades disposed as on a fork or trident.

‘The significance is, as you will have realized, religious,' the elderly man said with mild satisfaction. ‘Execution has been carried out in the name of the Holy Trinity. May I venture to inform you that my name is Richard Gaunt? I have a reason for so presuming.'

‘I am Charles Honeybath.' Honeybath didn't commonly exchange such information with persons casually encountered in public conveyances. But his interlocutor, if slightly odd, was demonstrably a man of impeccable comportment and address. ‘How do you do?' he added, stretching a further point.

‘How do you do? My excuse for hazarding so irregular a mode of introduction, Mr Honeybath, is to be found in the brochure I see lying beside you. I infer from it that you have some interest in Hanwell Court. I am on my way there now. It has been my home for several years.'

‘I am most interested to hear it.' Honeybath eyed with genuine curiosity the first inmate of his proposed haven with whom he had achieved speaking terms. ‘And you keep your collection there?'

‘Yes, indeed. Collecting is quite a thing with a number of us. Lady Munden, for example, collects seaweed. Indeed, she may be said to cultivate seaweed, if that is the term. She is not without hope of achieving some notable hybridities.'

‘I should suppose that to be difficult, so far from the sea?'

‘The establishment has provided Lady Munden with a large saline pool. It is always very good in that sort of way. But, between you and me, it seems probable that medical considerations were involved. The contemplation of seaweed would appear to have a composing effect upon the emotions.'

‘I see.' Honeybath wondered whether the same was to be said of the contemplation of outlandish weaponry. To this occupation, indeed, Mr Gaunt was now showing a disposition to return. He was rummaging in the suitcase.

‘Now, I wonder,' he said, ‘whether I have anything else that might interest you? Ah! Here is the hopper for my Gatling gun. It is the last piece missing, so I believe I can now assemble the thing. Not from Sotheby's, this; I picked it up in a useful little place I know of in the Mile End Road. A remarkable achievement in its day, the Gatling gun. It has justly been commemorated in the poetical sphere.

 

We have got

The Gatling gun, and they have not.

 

Kipling, no doubt.'

‘Belloc, more probably.' Honeybath cast a dubious eye over what was now being exhibited to him. ‘Your interest in your subject appears to be wide-ranging,' he said. ‘Does it stretch to practical ballistics? When you have put together this Gatling-thing will you get round to firing it?'

‘Oh, very probably – very probably indeed. There is Colonel Dacre's rifle-range, you know. They constructed it for him after the accident to Admiral Emery. There is a great deal of forethought at Hanwell.'

‘I am delighted to hear it.' Honeybath hesitated upon this. He rather regretted having exposed the promotional material for Hanwell Court on the seat beside him. Had he not done so, indeed, he would have failed to pick up some interesting scraps of information on the place from this harmless connoisseur of violence. But now he could not very well conceal the purpose of his present journey. It wouldn't do, for instance, to say that he was proposing to inspect Hanwell Court as a possible place of residence for a maiden aunt, or something of that sort. It looked as if he and Mr Gaunt were going to arrive there together, and if this happened any prevarication would almost certainly be detected. But then why think in terms of ‘detection' at all? He saw that at heart he must be a little ashamed ofthe whole project – almost as if he were thinking in terms of being sent to gaol or entering a home for alcoholics. This was very absurd – but there it was. Perhaps like Othello he had an instinct for an unhoused free condition, and if he settled for Hanwell would come to regret its circumscription and confine.

‘I'm booked into Hanwell Court myself,' he said, suddenly and firmly. ‘At least in a tentative way. And I'm running down to take another look at it.'

‘Excellent, Mr Honeybath! I sincerely hope you don't think better of your resolve. I shall look forward to many pleasant confabulations over this joint interest of ours. Daggers and stilettos make a large and intricate study in themselves, do they not? Have you ever thought, by the way, of specializing in those that came to be employed in duelling? Do you run to a
main gauche
?'

‘I haven't even heard of it. And you are mistaken, Mr Gaunt, in supposing that I…'

‘It was, of course, named from the fact that it was held in the left hand and used for parrying. I lately acquired a specimen with a toothed edge on which the adversary's sword could be caught and broken. But in the main, I confess, I have of late been working mainly in the field of offensive weapons. Hyper-offensive weapons, indeed, if the term is an admissible one. They exert a peculiar fascination over me. The dagger with the poison-channel, as perfected in Mantua: there is great scope there. And the amazing ingenuity so often employed in inventing blades capable of inflicting particularly awkward lacerations. I have read that the poet Browning was an enthusiastic devotee of these.'

Honeybath felt disposed to say, ‘But the painter Honeybath is not.' He reflected, however, that this might be (at least metaphorically) wounding, and that Mr Gaunt's hobbyhorse was entirely innocent. Moreover, it looked as if they might be destined at least to pass the time of day for the remainder of their joint lives. So he held his peace while being shown several more lethal objects which had been knocked down to his companion the day before. The total sum of money that had thereby passed through Messrs Sotheby's hands must have been very considerable. But then Hanwell Court was far from being any refuge for genteel indigence. What it
was
a refuge for, Honeybath was beginning to feel he hadn't been quite adequately informed. Was Colonel Dacre more careless than a military man ought to be of the conditions under which he fired off his rifle? Had Admiral Emery perished on the instant, like poor Admiral Byng on his quarter-deck at Portsmouth? Was Lady Munden really provided with lavish facilities for treating bits of seaweed as if they were dahlias or sweet peas? Was his new acquaintance Mr Gaunt any more to be trusted with firearms (or even
misérecordes
and
mains gauches
) than his fellow-inmate the colonel? Honeybath decided to seek cautious enlightenment on these matters. So in a pause after Mr Gaunt had finished expounding the operation of something called a
bouche à feu
he ventured on a change of subject.

‘Would it be impertinent,' he asked, ‘to inquire what directed your interest to Hanwell Court in the first place?'

‘Ah, that was a matter of my trustees.' Mr Gaunt was clearly not offended. ‘For some years I have found it convenient to have my financial affairs, and so forth, conducted by persons of that sort. And I am fortunate enough to have very reliable trustees. After comparing notes with a number of our residents I have come to the conclusion that I am very fortunate indeed. By no means all are as satisfied as I am.'

‘I am sorry to hear that. Troublesome trustees must be extremely vexatious.' Honeybath paused on this sympathetic note. ‘Lady Munden, for example,' he said at a venture. ‘Does she not get on too well with hers?'

‘She is far from pleased with them. I think I may say – strictly in confidence, Mr Honeybath – that the seaweed has to be described as an inexpensive second-best. Lady Munden had formed the project, the wholly laudable project, of purchasing a substantial stretch of the park at Hanwell and constituting it a reserve for threatened indigenous fauna. She was simply told that the money wasn't there.' Mr Gaunt shook his head in a sombre fashion. ‘Incredible as it may seem, that is what her trustees told her. She then offered to throw the enterprise open to the public for an appropriate fee, and declared herself willing to sit in person at a turnstile and collect the cash. She had made the most careful calculations, she was able to declare, and was assured there would be a substantial profit. But her trustees remained obdurate. These are grim times, Mr Honeybath, grim times indeed. The late Sir Adrian Munden, although not a man of good family, fell little short of being what you and I would call a nabob. But here was plain penury confronting his widow.'

‘How very shocking.' Honeybath, who had perfected a technique of offering composing remarks to tiresome sitters for whom the times were out of joint, offered this absurd untruth unblushingly. But the train was now slowing down to make its first halt at Didcot, and he felt a strong impulse to gather together his belongings and make a dash for freedom. But he reflected that Mr Gaunt's was possibly only a partial view of society at Hanwell Court; that he belonged, as it might be brutally put, to a lunatic fringe of the place. Honeybath was, moreover, a man commendably curious about his fellow-mortals in their inexhaustible variety, and he told himself it was extravagant to suppose that by merely venturing once more within the curtilage of Hanwell he would put himself in any danger of being locked up. He resolved to see the day's venture through.

‘Ah, Didcot!' he said. ‘An uninspiring gateway to the Berkshire Downs, is it not? But I believe ours is the next stop.'

‘It is, indeed. May I ask, Mr Honeybath, if you have good trustees?'

‘I have not, as it happens, had any occasion to consider the point so far.' Honeybath offered this slightly evasive reply on a note of sudden gloom. Everybody ends up, he supposed, by being bossed around. Or everybody whose condition is such that there is money to be had out of the bossing. ‘May I offer you my
Burlington Magazine
?' he asked. ‘I notice an interesting article on what is to be gathered of the later history of armour from Gervase Markham's
Souldier's
Accidence
.'

‘Thank you. Thank you very much,' Mr Gaunt said politely. ‘It is a subject a little aside from my own field of research. But it is always wise to broaden one's view.'

And Mr Gaunt, blessedly, absorbed himself in a purely defensive scene of things for the rest of the journey.

 

 

 

The traveller who approaches Hanwell Court by the main drive has the advantage of first viewing the mansion disposed beyond a gigantic
repoussoir
known to art historians as the
Poseidon urging the Sea-Monster to attack Laomedon
. The monster has three heads, each with gaping jaws, and these must have spewed water once upon a time, since the whole group is perched within an enormous scallop shell which must have served as the basin of the fountain when it was a fountain in its native Italy. The entire
ensemble
is now perched on a squat pedestal some twelve feet high. The god straddles the monster, with arms flung up in the conventional pose of a huntsman unleashing hounds. Viewed from the rear (for the statue faces the house lying in a shallow valley beyond) the uninstructed might conjecture that Poseidon is in fact his brother Zeus, and that the business on hand is the directing of a thunderbolt against some race of overweening mortals in the magnificent architectural performance below.

Honeybath's brochure contained the information that Hanwell Court had been completed, as to its main part, in the year 1702. What is immediately presented to the eye contemplating the main facade is six very tall windows on either side of a very tall front door. Above these are thirteen windows apparently equally tall (and in fact, therefore, rather taller), the middle one being a third as broad as the others. And above these again are thirteen squat little windows beneath an oppressive cornice and an elegant balustrade. A visiting Martian might suppose the entire edifice designed for the occupation of a dozen or so giants who had enslaved a local population of dwarfs now cowering in attic hutches when not performing the menial duties required of them. And indeed the architect had probably had in mind social dispositions not altogether remote from this fantasy.