In the Land of Time (52 page)

And he did introduce me to several. And I pieced the story together, which they had often heard from the little man's own lips when dining out, when the port had gone round a few times. Or, indeed, he would tell it at any time.

He was very domestic and dined mostly at home with his wife; but when he did dine out with a neighbour and the men were all talking after dinner, sooner or later he would talk too, and he had told them all his story. It was really the romance of that suburb. They all knew it there, as people in Eddington near Westbury know about Alfred defeating the Danes, or in Coventry about Lady Godiva. It was their romance, they had made it theirs; and they all told me about it, about their little neighbour's love, not unreciprocated, mind you, for that world-famous lady. Not unreciprocated, but brief as a beautiful meteor. I pieced it all together from many mouths, and I think I have got it pretty accurate now. It went like this. It was in the 5:15 train from Charing Cross. They all knew that. 5:15 P.M., of course. And this little man was going down to his suburb. Terrup was his name. And in the same carriage, in all her radiance, dazzled Miss Lucy Fells. And Terrup took no notice of her at all. She stirred slightly and looked around: for all her intuitions were aware that any movement is quickly caught by the eye. But still he took no notice. It was not that she was vain, but she had suddenly come upon something that she had not seen for years, sheer apathy in her presence. Was it possible that this little man did not know who she was?

Supposing a tiger striding out of the jungle came on a herd of gazelles, and they all went on quietly feeding; he would naturally be surprised. Lucy Fells's beauty and fame had gripped the heart of the world and was a power by no means less than that of a tiger: she was surprised, too. Terrup sat perfectly still, perfectly uninterested, gazing out of the window. There was nothing to see out of the window either: it was in November and nearly dark. Terrup was nothing to her, but the situation meant a great deal. It might 8even mean that her grip was failing her, her grip on the heart of the world. It might even mean she was ill. Or was the little man ill? Was he half paralyzed? She must do something for him; she must give him a chance; at least she must let him know who she was. That would help him and no doubt put everything right. She had bought an evening paper, hurrying to catch her train, and had not yet looked at it. There would be sure to be something in that about her journey. Yes, a large headline on the front page: Lucy Fells Goes to Blackheath.
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That was where she was going. She leaned forward to Terrup, and in her gracious famous voice said, “Would you care to see a paper?”

“Oh thank you,” he said and took it and looked at it and soon turned the front page.

So he was quite uninterested. Now she must let him know who she was, since he had quite evidently not found out. So she opened her small bag and began to rummage in it holding it quite low near the floor; and as she rummaged her gold cigarette case fell out. It had her name written clearly on one side, Lucy Fells in small diamonds. Which side up would it fall, she wondered? But it did not matter. As a matter of fact it fell diamondside upward.

“Oh I have dropped my cigarette case,” she said.

He picked it up for her.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “It was very careless of me. But I can't really lose it, unless it got stolen, because I have my name writen fairly large on it, as you see.”

And she showed it him. And he said, “Oh yes.”

She saw then unmistakably, though I don't know exactly how, but unmistakably, that he had never heard her name. The evening paper had printed it half an inch high. But he had never heard of it. Aphrodite coming in from the sea, to find all her temples fallen and nobody noticing her, would not have been more shocked.

I used the simile of a tiger among gazelles that paid no attention to him. A tiger in such a situation would not long remain idle. Nor did Miss Lucy Fells. She struck with her full force, with all her beauty and all her charm. She spoke to Albert Terrup about the weather. She said that the days were drawing in fast. She said that the train was slow. She asked what time it got to Blackheath. She asked if he knew the country round there. She asked what it was like. She said that she thought the gardens must be very nice in spring. She said she was fond of gardens. She asked Albert Terrup if he was fond of gardens, too. She asked if he was much troubled with weeds, and what he did to get rid of them. And she asked what kind of weather they usually got at this time of year.

And when all those questions had been asked and lamely answered, Albert Terrup was at last at her feet, a tremendously happy, though abjectly conquered, heart. Nor was it to be wondered at. She had won the hearts of big audiences in great cities in far less time. It took her much longer than she felt that it ought to leave taken, but she did not grudge a minute of it; for this conquest had to be made. She could not have anyone holding out against her like this, at the height of her glory. What would Alexander have done if some little village of India had ignored him utterly? No, such a thing could not be.

When she had conquered Albert Terrup, he became her abject slave. He made fantastic suggestions: he spoke of flight to the Continent, he spoke of settling down in the suburbs. He even suggested that she should marry him.

To none of these suggestions Lucy Fells turned a deaf ear, or definitely refused to accede to any of them. For a conqueror cannot refuse to accept a surrender. And on that short railway journey from Charing Cross in Blackheath, which was beyond the station at which he should have got out, flowered the romance of Albert Terrup's life.

What I think happened was that in that railway carriage was a brief but idyllic scene, in which the world-famous actress really did become engaged to Albert Terrup. And at Blackheath they embraced and parted with vows of love, which Albert Terrup remembered all through his quiet life, and always will, as Lucy Fells sincerely intended to do on the platform at Blackheath station. But with all her public engagements, and no record of this in writing, it must have slipped her memory, and I believe that quite honestly she forgot all about it.

I've been reading a lot about great men lately;
having
to read about them; Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Nelson and Mr. Gladstone. But there's a thing I've noticed about grown-ups, and I imagine it applies jolly well to all of them, great and small: they don't keep at it. They may be great just when they're having a battle, or whatever it is, but at other times they'll sit in a chair and read a paper, or talk about the taxes being all wrong, or go out for a walk along a road, when they might be ratting or climbing a tree, or doing anything sensible. Now, Bob Tipling is great the whole time. I should think he is the greatest chap in the world. Any way he is the greatest chap in our school, by a long way. And he's not only the cleverest, but he's best at cricket and football too. Once he made a hundred runs. And he's a fast bowler too. Well, I can't tell you all about that: there just wouldn't be time. We beat Blikton by an innings and 70 runs, and all because of Bob Tipling. But what I am going to tell you about is about Bob as a pirate, because lots of people have seen him playing cricket, but I and one other boy are the only people in the world besides Bob who know all about him being a pirate. So, if I don't tell about it, probably nobody will, and that would be a pity. Not that I like writing, I'd sooner be out-of-doors. Well, Bob was talking to me once, and I was saying what I'd like to be when I grew up, if I could get the job; and of course that isn't always so easy. What I'd like best of all would be to capture cities, like Alexander and those people; but of course you can't always do that. And then Bob said that he didn't want to be anything when he grew up, because grown-ups were always dull and didn't seem able to enjoy themselves properly, or even to want to: he wanted to be it now. And I asked him what he wanted to be, and he said a pirate. And I asked him what sea he was going to. Now, Bob Tipling always knew all about what he was talking of; more than anybody else; so I can tell you I was pretty surprised when I heard his answer. And yet I knew that Bob wasn't talking nonsense. He never does. He said, “The Round Pond.”
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Well, I knew the Round Pond quite well; used to go there most Sundays; but I didn't see how you could be a pirate on the Round Pond. And so I asked Bob. Well, he said he'd had the idea for something like a year, and he'd hung about Kensington Gardens, which was quite near where he lived (both of us for that matter), until he found a boy whose father had lots of money, and he had told the idea to him and he had liked it very much. The idea was to put a pirate ship on the Round Pond, and to fit it out with torpedo-tubes.

“How would you do that?” I asked.

“It's already been done,” he said. “They're miniature torpedoes, just as it's a miniature ship. There's two of them, one on each side, and we've had a dozen torpedoes made. They are shot out by compressed air, like little air-guns, and there's a good big explosive in them, which goes off when the nose hits anything. They cost a lot to make, but this boy has got lots.”

“Does your ship put to sea?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

“Then how do you fire them?” I said.

“That cost a lot too,” he told me. “I touch them off by wireless.”

“What will people say,” I asked him, “when they see you shooting off your torpedoes from your wireless-set on the bank at their boats?”

“They won't see,” said Bob. “But we'll have to be careful about that. We could have it in a large sailing-boat at the edge of the water, what they call a parent boat; or we could hide it in a tea-basket. Then we wait till a good big ship has put to sea, and we launch the pirate-ship so that it should intercept her. If it doesn't, we try again and again, until we are lucky. What I want to do is to get the Rakish Craft (that is to be her name) head on to her beam at about 3 or 4 yards, then we fire a torpedo, and if we meet her somewhere about the middle of the pond, she should never reach land. What do you think of it?”

“I think it's perfectly splendid,” I said. “There's only one thing seems to be missing like.”

“What's that?” he asked rather sharply.

“Treasure,” I said. “Isn't treasure rather the chief part of a pirate's life?”

“That shows all you know about it,” he said. “The principal part of a pirate's life is the battles he has, and the thrill of seeing his enemy sink, and the danger, the risk of hanging. I don't say they'd hang me, but I'd go to prison for years if I was caught. And of course if anybody was drowned as a result of the accident, going in to pull out the ship or anything, then I'd be hanged. And even without that, after all I'm a pirate; it doesn't matter where: I might be hanged in any case. Now, I'm giving you a chance you'll probably never have again in a lifetime. Would you like to come in with me?”

Well, of course it was pretty wonderful getting an offer like that from such a tremendous chap as Bob Tipling; because I knew he would be as wonderful as a pirate as he was at everything else. Of course I said, “Yes, rather.”

And then he told me what I would have to do. Carry the tea-basket chiefly, and walk about and look unconcerned. Or look concerned if he told me to, and walk away from him to draw attention off. “It's full of detectives,” he said.

That was on a Saturday morning, and we get the afternoons off on Saturdays. So Bob Tipling told me to meet him at the Round Pond at 2 o'clock, which I did, and he made me walk up and down looking unconcerned. There were some nice ships there, big sailing-ships and some clockwork ones, and even one that went by petrol, a beauty, a big grey ship. “That's the one we'll get if she's there when we put to sea,” said Bob. “She'll hole nicely.”

And I made the mistake of saying, “Wouldn't it be rather a pity to sink a nice ship like that?”

But Bob explained to me that the people who owned it should think themselves very lucky if their ship was sunk without any loss of life, which wasn't often the case if you were attacked by a pirate. “And, after all, there must
be
pirates,” he said. “And anyhow,” he said, “I shall only attack those that deserve it, as Robin Hood used to do on land. The money that that boat cost would have kept a poor man and his family in food for a year. I'm helping the Government, really, to swat the rich. Though that's not the view they'll take if they catch me.”

“They ought to,” I said.

“We'll just not get caught,” said Bob Tipling. “Now walk about concernedly, so that they'll watch you if I want their attention switched off me.”

So I did, and it's wonderful how soon I saw one or two men mopping their faces with white handkerchiefs, and making funny little signs. We went away then, because we didn't want people to get to know us.

There were only three of us in it; Bob, me and this rich boy that Bob had found. He had hung about among the trees in Kensington Gardens off and on for nearly a year, before he found this boy walking alone and got a chance to talk to him. He had tried others, of course, but they hadn't enough money. This one had, and he took to the idea at once, as who wouldn't? He had always wanted to be a pirate, and knew that he never would be; and then this chance came to him, brought by Bob. Bob had worked it all out, except the actual making of the torpedoes, and he knew there were people who could make them, and send them off by wireless: all he wanted was the money; and this boy had it, or he could get it out of his father, which comes to the same thing. Bob fixed next Sunday week for putting to sea, under the black-and-yellow flag with the skull-and-crossbones; only, Bob said that the actual flag might attract too much attention, and that he would sail under false colours, as pirates often did. We said nothing to each other in school; we almost might have been strangers; but it wouldn't have done to have let a thing like that get out; we should only have been hanged, if it had, before we started. Bob Tipling said that it wasn't a hanging matter. And he would be sure to know. At the same time we were pirates, and I never heard of anything else happening to a pirate, if he got caught, in any book that I've read. So it seemed best not to risk it.