Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (19 page)

We wandered up the main street which had always been a dismal succession of suburban chain stores. I automatically think of it in connection with the sale of innumerable packets of cheap tea. But behind it, on the north side, were two or three older streets running one behind the other in parallel with the Thames. These still retained something of the jaunty, dingy, junk-shop air which Dickens fastened on another and more famous riverside town. You could smell the mud on the flats: its scent, neither seductive nor actively unpleasant, was like that of a trout which has been landed a few hours. The lowest of these roads, the one which actually contained the riparian embankment, was well-known to me: years before it had been one of my favourite walks, partly because it had the reputation of being dangerous to children.

It had a violent camber. On one side some odd little houses were sunk by three or four steps below the level of the roadway. On the other a low wall, broken by little embrasures in which seats were placed, surmounted a bluff or small cliff about twenty feet in height. It is one of the few spots along the flat lower reaches of the Thames where the shore rises at all sharply above the water-level. At some point during the late-Victorian engineering operations which regulated the banks of the Thames a couple of small jetties had been built below the highest point of the bluff. There was a bench immediately overlooking them and giving a further view across the wide dirty expanse of water to some so-called marshes, which were really only a few flooded meadows, bordered with the hulks of derelict barges.

Varvara and I seated ourselves on the bench. It was hot; after the journey and a couple of miles’ walk we were a little tired. I thought again of my duty which now coincided happily with my inclinations. Before I left Aynho Terrace I had asked Turpin to put me up a flask of something drinkable. Now I produced it and unscrewed the stopper. With his usual acute instinct Turpin must have realized that I needed the maximum of stimulant in the minimum of space. For his own taste he dealt in wines; gin he once told me—perhaps quoting his old master, the port-loving professor—was a drink only fit for ostlers. But on this occasion he had stifled his aesthetic sense, and mixed the coarse spirit very cunningly with lemon juice and dashes of Mrs. Ellison’s expensive liqueurs. After a couple of mouthfuls the sunlight began to fall with a softer glow over the great drain and the hoot of a passing tug evoked the image of foreign ports.

‘Have some?’ I said to Varvara.

‘No.’

‘I thought it might be a good idea if we had a few drinks this evening. It would relax us.’

Varvara did not see it: she was both young enough and temperamentally robust enough to prefer staying tense.

After an interval she said in an unexpectedly sentimental tone:

‘This is very sad for you, David.’

‘What is?’

‘That you should be ruined in your life.’

‘How’s that?’ I asked, carelessly allowing my role to slip.

‘Now that you have run away with me there will be a great scandal on account not only of murder but also morals.’ There was a pause whilst I took in the subtle distinction; then she continued: ‘Do not think that I shall be ungrateful.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I wouldn’t think that.’

Varvara appeared slightly huffed, as if I had taken too much for granted.

‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘I shall grant you my supreme favours.’

I yelped with involuntary agony.

‘Good God, where do you pick up language like that?’

‘In a book. One that came from my grandmother’s library.’

‘Well, it contains all the essentials of bad taste—archness, genteelism, and imprecision.’

‘Tonight,’ said Varvara, ‘you shall have a cut off the joint.’

‘Now we’ve moved down from My Ladye’s Bower to the
palais de danse.
May I ask where that bit of your repertoire came from?’

‘A friend of Andrew’s says it.’

‘Suppose we stop talking this nonsense and go for another walk.’

I thought she might start worrying about a room for the night. But she did not seem to care if the joints and favours were granted under the sky. We strolled about half a mile towards the outskirts of the town where my former home was situated. The building looked even less distinguished than in the eye of memory, but the garden had not suffered the customary shrinkage. It was still big and untidy and surrounded by wild shrubberies.

Varvara said: ‘We can hide there from the policemen.’

I sighed. ‘My dear, what on earth is going to happen to you? In the end, I mean?’

Varvara replied: ‘I shall become important.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘In this country,’ said Varvara, ‘I do not know my fanny from my finger-tips—as you are always telling me.’ (I must disclaim the phraseology which presumably came from the same source as her previous remark.) ‘But wherever I am I shall always know better than you how to advance myself in the world.’

I sighed again. It would be a bad day when the granddaughter of Joseph Ellison, the go-getter, finally drove out my Noble Savage.

We wandered back by the way we had come, except that this time our course took us into the topmost of the three small roads which separated the main street from the river. Though it was chiefly residential it had a pleasant humble brown-faced little pub in it. Since it was after half-past five, and Turpin’s cocktail had gone, with all but a memory of its ‘lift’, I turned in and soon we were drinking mugs of Kentish cider. It was last year’s and pretty near the end of the barrel which is said to make it more intoxicating.

Varvara was not very interested in drink. She had lived in a rabid Sunnite community where, for Moslems, the Prophet’s ban on alcohol was rigidly enforced. Nevertheless, I gather that there was plenty of liquor about for those who wanted it: certainly her father, when in the mood, did not go short. The trouble was—and this tends to be true of any product which is manufactured in defiance of popular opinion—that the quality was execrable, more fitted for the bottom of a petrol-can than a young girl’s stomach.

Still, she had no prejudices. And she possessed the kind of ‘good head’ which is often associated with a generous capacity elsewhere. She was thirsty and down it went by halves to my full pints. I was keeping control of the situation until pub-freemasonry set in and we became involved with the regular customers. They consisted chiefly of men who earned their living in the warehouses by the waterside, with a sprinkling of mechanics and small shopkeepers. I woke up from a long session of dirty stories to see her far away on the other side of the bar surrounded by a different group. She was sitting on the counter with her hat on the back of her head, singing in the Turki language.

A man next to me nodded knowingly.

‘Belge, I’d say. ’Ot—I seen ’em in Ostend.’

My action in running her out of the place was not popular. Many doubts were expressed about my parentage and virility. But eventually we broke free. All the way up the street Varvara reproached me in ringing tones for my infirmity of purpose.

‘You have taken me from among the servants of God,’ she cried. ‘I knew them and they were as pure as apricots!’

I gritted my teeth but did not answer. I had begun to realize how much more I had bitten off than I could chew. Now that it loomed over me the climax of my plan seemed quite impossible. Not just dangerous, but so utterly foreign to my nature that I could never execute it. I should almost certainly have thrown in my hand, if chance had not thrust the means of law-breaking across my path.

We had turned back towards the river and were traversing the street below the one which contained the pub. Here a part of the roadway was up for repairs. Just beyond the fenced-off cavity, a few bicycles with crates in front were leaning against the kerb outside a shop: I suppose they belonged to delivery-boys. But the significant factor was the presence of a policeman marching slowly up the opposite pavement. I was overcome by this hint from the auspices.

As we passed the first bicycle I casually pushed it over: the constable did not turn. But at the fall of the second he looked round briefly. With his eye still on me, I kicked the third under the handlebars so that it fell with a crash. The officer turned round and began slowly to retrace his steps in our direction.

I felt that I was committed, yet, at the same time, I had not done enough to ensure my object. There was a mild weariness about the policeman’s approach which suggested that in Horrage vulgar horseplay with bicycles was too common to earn more than a rebuke. I cast about for something more actively reprehensible. Whilst he was still twenty yards off I took a penny out of my pocket and shied it at the glass of a street-lamp. Rather humiliatingly it missed, but at any rate it showed that I was a serious criminal who would not stop at damaging municipal property.

I was reminded of Varvara by a loud, challenging cry. She had ducked under the roadmakers’ barrier and was standing beside a dump of tarred blocks piled up for laying. She had one of them in her hand. Uttering another happy yell of defiance she flung it smartly through the window of a tobacconist.

What did she think she was doing? I don’t suppose she had the least idea. For the moment she was a creature not of reason but pure heredity. She was her father happily plunging into the thick of one of his ‘damned uproars’.

The constable quickened his pace to a trot. But the next instant he was forced to double up to avoid a couple more of the blocks which Varvara had dispatched straight at his head.

This was getting too serious for me. I had not bargained for assaults on the police. Calling Varvara to follow—I suppose a real gentleman would have made her lead the way—I fled up the street. I had abandoned my plan and I no longer intended to be caught after a mere token flight. I made for the riverside because I remembered that lower down where the embankment ceased there was a series of wharves which had always used to be dotted with timber stacks and dumps of scrap metal. If we could reach that area we might be able to play hide-and-seek until dark came on.

An ominous sound struck my ears. The constable had drawn his whistle out and was blowing it as he ran. The strain of listening for an answering blast made me careless. I was crossing the road towards the seat in the embrasure where we had sat earlier that evening, and I stepped off the kerb before I was ready. Immediately a sharp pain shot through my ankle, turning my run into a series of rapid hops. I glanced round and saw that my pursuer was closer than I had imagined. Indeed whilst I looked he overhauled Varvara on the opposite side of the road but continued after me on the honourable but incorrect assumption that the man must be the chief desperado.

I realized that I could not get away and resistance would only make my case worse. Panting I sank down on the bench overlooking the river. Next moment the policeman’s hand was on my shoulder, not roughly, but with a grip that showed he was ready for trouble. He was a big ginger-haired man and his face was covered with the largest and most individually defined beads of sweat which I have ever seen on a human being: they were like marbles.

‘I’ll come quietly,’ I gasped. But these words, spoken honestly for myself, soon took on a treacherous air. Varvara had other ideas. When she approached panting heavily my captor probably thought that she was sportingly putting herself in the bag in order to take her share of the blame. I would not swear but that a faint smile of complacency crossed his face. If so, it was soon wiped off. Slowing to a walk, she came right up to him. Then, without the slightest warning, she advanced her forearm, held like a horizontal bar, under his chin. At the same time she put her leg behind his and pushed. It was simply a variant of a common wrestling throw, but the element of surprise was increased by the fact that one did not associate such aggressive tactics with a woman.

The man let go his hold on me. He went back so quickly that one had the illusion that he had been lifted off the ground. In fact he must have taken a couple of rapid unbalanced steps before he came up against the wall of the embankment. He struck it about the level of his buttocks, his feet flew up, and he toppled over. There was a moment of agonizing silence and then from below there rose an awful squelching noise. To my brain, fevered by one frightful accident, this sound could only indicate the breaking up of the human body. I did not stop to reflect that such consequences were a little too dramatic for a fall of a mere twenty feet.

Varvara and I looked at each other—I appalled, she still flushed with berserk joy. Gingerly I approached the edge and peered over. What I saw gave me a sense of relief so exquisite it almost made the previous anguish worth while.

Between the two small jetties built from hard stone a short stretch of the river-bank had been left in its primeval state. There were perhaps five yards of good Thames-side mud, having a consistency somewhere between those of treacle and suet. By good fortune the constable had landed on this substance. Otherwise he would probably have broken his back or staved in his skull. As it was, he had obviously been winded by the fall. But whilst I watched he began to stir. Slowly he disengaged himself from the clinging slime leaving behind an almost perfect impression of his rear view.

Varvara joined me for a moment. But she wasted no time in gratitude to Providence.

‘Run,’ she said. ‘Or he will catch us again and next time he will know to beware of me.’

That last was a very unfortunate phrase. We both knew it. When we set off again, I had the impression that we were running away from certain parallels and inferences rather than the police.

If there had been any pursuit, my ankle, though not so bad as I had feared, would have undone us. But the constable must have been severely shaken up, and perhaps he had lost his whistle. Our greatest luck was that the road happened to have been empty throughout the incident, otherwise some public-spirited person might have raised a hue and cry.

Even so I realized that if there was any search it would certainly include Horrage station. I pushed Varvara on to the first bus we saw in the High Street. It happened to go to Dartford, from where we got a train almost immediately. I don’t think we spoke at all during the journey.

From one point of view my crusade had been an outstanding success. I had set out to confuse the issues and to bamboozle Varvara by folly out of worse folly. Yet I would have foregone this achievement. I would have let her involve herself with the Law if I could have won back my old certainty that she had nothing to fear except the shadows in her own mind. But that parapet, that policeman, that throw . . . and that uncle. . . .

It was after ten when we arrived back at Aynho Terrace and everybody in the house seemed to have gone to bed. Still avoiding each other’s eyes we did likewise.

I lay awake for a long time, examining the rusty underpinning and defective supports of my moral sense. I was not even quite sure that the thing was there at all. Did I recognize wickedness? Well . . . yes, in selected forms, principally mean dealing and gross cruelty. But I did not seem able to accept any crime as heinous, merely because authority had so labelled it, or because of the gravity of its consequences. Murder was a terrible offence. It took away something which could never be replaced. But when it came down to particular cases, who wanted Cedric back?

In the last resort, however, training and the reasoned opinion of humanity had their effect. Without actively blaming Varvara I felt that she had somehow burdened herself . . . not exactly with a load of guilt but with a sort of persistent disability or taint.

At one point I forced myself to envisage the scene on the roof-garden in the hope that I could reduce the charge to manslaughter or pure accident. But it was hard to believe that a push or trip was administered in a high unfenced place with any object but that of throwing the victim off. The only plea which could be readily sustained was a misguided self-defence. There had never been any doubt about the genuineness of her belief that her uncle had tried to kill her.