The Courtesy of Death (5 page)

Dunton began to interrogate me in the pleasantest possible way. Where had I been looking for my inns, and since when? What places had I inspected? I answered with a frankness which must have
convinced him of my sincerity; but he was a modest man and distrusted his own judgment.

‘I’m going to be indiscreet,’ he said at last. ‘Isn’t your pub-hunting cover for something else?’

‘Good God, no! Why do you think so?’

‘Because you have asked a number of connected questions.’

‘Just curiosity,’ I replied—which was true enough so far as it went. ‘An innkeeper is like a priest. He wants to know all about the parish before he accepts the
living.’

‘Neat!’ he smiled. ‘But if you ever feel like telling me all the truth, remember that psychiatrists keep just as many secrets as landlords and priests.’

This was too good a chance to miss. I told him that an impulsive act of mine, which seemed charitable at the time, had involved me with a bunch of believers in something odd, and I wanted to
know what they did believe.

‘I’ve had a patient among them and got some of it out of her,’ he said. ‘All life is one and interchanges communication. Death is a mere break in continuity, but it may
be momentarily inconvenient or painful. So, if you hand it out, you should express regret. That somehow creates unity with the victim and wipes the slate clean. My patient was obsessed by hunting.
In her Rorschach tests she saw antlers, tusks, foxes, heads of imaginary animals. Always death and relics of death.

‘Well, such a creed is attractive to anyone who loves killing birds and beasts. It has some affinity to the sorrow which big-game hunters tell us they feel when they have destroyed a very
fine animal. I feel it myself when my daughters send for me to squash a large, very perceptive spider. There’s a moment of fellowship with the creature. The funny thing is that this belief is
also a comfort to people who hate killing—like this Fosworthy who won’t and Tom Aviston-Tresco who has to.’

‘You mean that if one were shooting pheasants,’ I asked incredulously, ‘it would be just: Bang, Bang! Sorry, Sorry!?’

‘I don’t know that they would go so far as that,’ he laughed. ‘But I think it potentially dangerous to have no normal respect for death; so I wondered if you were not
investigating officially.’

I assured him again that I was not.

‘Anyway it’s all nonsense,’ Dunton went on. ‘This life is exciting, varied and to some lucky people beautiful, and we psychologists make it seem a lot more difficult than
it is. As to the next life—if it exists—we don’t know a damned thing about it. Have you ever read Teilhard de Chardin?’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard of him.’

‘Well, as a Jesuit he was surer of immortality than you or I can be. But the main purpose of life, he thought, was to love, enjoy and seek knowledge. And if a man gave it all he’d
got he couldn’t go very far wrong.’

‘So if one of these people fell crazily and romantically in love, it might show up this continuity stuff as a bit doubtful?’

‘At any rate he would find it hard to accept death as a mere momentary inconvenience when it parted him from what he loved,’ Dunton answered.

That very simply explained Fosworthy for me, though not why his friends should have taken his back-sliding so hard.

‘The trouble is that most of them are unmarried or without children and basically lonely,’ Dunton added. ‘Suppose I hadn’t the luck to have all this bouncing,
exasperating, dear life around me, then I might sublimate the death wish in dozens of odd ways. But that doesn’t explain the attraction of this nonsense for Tom Aviston-Tresco who has led a
most satisfying, full life ever since his wife ran away from him. I suppose that all the killing he must do has given him a neurosis, and he forgets all his healing.’

The Duntons were going into Glastonbury to see a travelling circus and pressed me very warmly to join them; but I did not want to outstay my welcome. I shared their quick meal and pretended that
I had business at The Green Man and had reserved a room there.

As soon as I was on the road, I decided that I might as well stay at the inn anyway instead of pointlessly dashing back to London. Although the Gorms did not normally take guests, they were
happy to see that the prospective purchaser was still on the hook. And indeed I was. I often day-dream of The Green Man and find myself drawing on the back of an envelope the alterations which I
would have made.

About nine o’clock the man I had seen on the grey gelding came into the bar. He recognised me, handsomely asked me to forgive his rudeness in the afternoon and insisted on buying me a
drink. He took a polite interest in my plans—patronising, but not more so than was acceptable from someone who knew every inch of his country—and asked me why I particularly wanted the
Mendips. I told him that I wished to avoid both the sprawling suburbs of Bristol and the coast. As I have said, I am clumsy at explaining intuitive reasons. I may have sounded as if I were almost
contemptuously sparring with him.

‘These hills must once have been a kind of sprawl themselves,’ he said.

I saw what he meant. One was seldom out of sight of the settlements and cemeteries of Neolithic and Bronze Ages breaking the smooth continuity of the grass.

I wondered how their ships got there, and ordered another round of drinks.

‘Up the Bristol Channel with the prevailing south-westerlies behind them,’ he replied, ‘but a lot of them must have come to grief on Hartland. It was easier when men could
simply walk from France, following the game.’

‘Not much of a sprawl then,’ I said for something to say. ‘Just a skin tent here and there on the Glassy Hill.’

‘I believe the pundits won’t have Glassy Hill any more,’ he remarked. ‘Glastonbury means the town of Glasteing.’

‘Then why is it called Ynys Witrin in British?’

‘I didn’t know it was. What does it mean?’

‘The Island of Glass. And all the legends insist that it was a hill as well. It marked the way to the world underground.’

‘To wealth, too?’ he asked, looking straight at me with a sort of challenge which I could not then understand.

‘Not unless you obeyed the conditions. Like Orpheus and so forth.’

‘Where do you get all this from?’

‘Out of the collective unconscious,’ I replied, trying a bit of Dunton on him.

I describe this pointless conversation, because it was plain to me later why he had introduced the subject of early inhabitants. However, collective unconscious shut him up, possibly because he
did not know what I was talking about—nor did I—but more probably because he did know and shied away from the term.

Very gradually he changed the subject to the question of my future hotel.

‘I think I can give you a good tip,’ he said, ‘which will make up for being short with you this afternoon. If you were to call on the Manager of the Somerset and Dorset Bank in
Glastonbury, he could put you in touch with someone who is thinking of selling. The inn is not on the market yet.’

Soon afterwards he left. When the bar closed, I asked Gorm who he was.

‘Mr Alan Jedder,’ he replied. ‘Farms five hundred acres up top. You can see his place from the Twelve Barrows.’

I had been nowhere near the Twelve Barrows when he rode up to me; but earlier in the afternoon I had been prying about among the tracks and earthworks of his country. So I was right in my guess.
He had been keeping me under observation.

‘Does he come here often?’

‘Haven’t seen him for donkey’s years.’

Gorm did not know a lot about him except that he was a bachelor, had served in the Navy and belonged to one of the wealthy families of Bristol industrialists.

The bank Jedder had mentioned was Fosworthy’s. I doubted if the Manager had any pub to offer me. The intention was to feel for my financial resources. Since Fosworthy was not
dead—the postcards to his housekeeper proved that—he must have found somebody to lend him money.

When I had gone to bed, questions began to answer themselves. How had Jedder known where to find me? Well, he could have telephoned Aviston-Tresco who told him to try The Green Man on the off
chance that I might be there. How had he known in the afternoon that I was the man with whom Fosworthy might have shared his secret? Car number, probably.

Till then I had done no thinking about the missing coat, content to be vaguely aware that there was something illogical about it. Of course! The answer struggled up into consciousness and
competed with sleep. The coat ought not to have been taken away. In that case I should never have had reason to suspect that my connection with Fosworthy was known. Then why wasn’t it left in
the boot? Possible answer: because I could produce it in a court of law. If that was correct, Fosworthy had really been in danger. As a corollary—whatever danger threatened him now threatened
me.

In the morning I decided to visit the bank and play it their way. It would be suspicious if I took no action on a hot tip from a knowledgeable acquaintance; also I wanted to get to the bottom of
the business. There was a smell of panic in all these hasty arrangements of theirs.

I allowed time for Jedder to telephone—in case he had not got in touch with the Manager overnight—and turned up at the bank at midday. I was shown into the Manager’s office at
once. My first impression was of a wispy, pepper-and-salt man with pop eyes. They were as prominent as Persian eyes, but a watery blue instead of deep brown. He was fussily dressed for the manager
of a small provincial branch and already in his early fifties, which suggested that his ability was not very marked. A more charitable judgment would be that he enjoyed country life and had no
ambition. Like myself, in fact. Still, I could not help feeling that he was vague and ineffective.

With a wet cordiality he discoursed on hotel finance in general and asked me what district I preferred. He knew damned well what district I preferred. I answered curtly that I wanted Glastonbury
and the Mendips.

‘If you should change your mind, there will shortly be an executor’s sale of a very profitable free house the other side of Bath,’ he said.

That was a long way from his area, so I asked him how he knew about the sale and how sure he was of it.

He was embarrassed and murmured a lot of verbiage, meant to be imposing, on the subject of the grape-vine between managers. When I pressed him for details of his profitable free house, I was
surer than ever that it was a clumsy invention to find out whether I should be tempted and what my resources were. I fear I was deliberately cruel to him as he wriggled in his chair and fiddled
with papers.

Dropping his vague proposal as soon as he reasonably could, he told me he knew of a building site near Wookey. A licence had recently fallen in and he believed that the local Bench would
transfer it to a respectable hotel proprietor.

‘The site belongs to a Mr H. B. Fosworthy,’ he said, his pale forehead beginning to glisten with sweat. ‘Perhaps you know him?’

‘I do not,’ I replied. ‘But I remember the name. Hadn’t he escaped from a private nursing home or something?’

And I told him how a complete stranger had called at night when I was staying at The Green Man and asked me if I had seen his patient.

I thought that would fix him, and it did. He was out of his depth, uncomfortably dominated by me, and looked as if he would like to creep under his desk. I was exasperated by the silly little
man, and left the bank snorting at the incompetence of these anti-Fosworthians. It was only when I had driven half-way back to London that I remembered that Aviston-Tresco had never asked for
Fosworthy by name. If he, too, remembered that he hadn’t, I had given myself away. I thoroughly deserved it for bullying instead of meekly listening.

Three days passed—of a dullness that only an exile in London can know. You go to a show or two. You eat in restaurants. You try to get in touch with old friends who are always out or
abroad or ask you to lunch the following week. You are eager to talk to anyone who will talk to you.

I had more or less dismissed Fosworthy and his affairs from my mind, deciding that all this agitation was to be expected from a bunch of religious nuts. It was possible that mysterious Avalon or
the inexplicable holiness of Glastonbury might have something to do with it, but my best theory was that they had discovered uranium in the old Roman lead mines of the Mendips, that they were too
impractical—including the bank manager—to have the faintest notion what to do and that muddled pacifist convictions compelled them to keep quiet. It was an improbable guess, since the
hills must have been thoroughly and semi-officially prospected during the uranium boom, but it did account for the facts. They were afraid of me as a mining engineer, not as a future innkeeper.

On the fourth evening I left my depressing furnished flat to go out and buy myself a lonely meal. While I was strolling to the bus stop, I came face to face with Aviston-Tresco. He hailed me
very cordially as if I had been an old friend. His manner did not seem forced. The strange circumstances of our only meeting naturally created a sort of intimacy. We did
not—officially—know each other’s names. So he introduced himself, and so did I.

I guessed of course that his appearance in my district was no accident, but I was in a mood to hear what he had to say. Whatever his quarrel with Fosworthy, he was presentable and intelligent.
Dunton had described him as brilliant in his profession and leading a full life. I think I had the idea of getting the truth out of him as one reasonable and discreet man to another. He gave me the
impression that he, too, was very ready to talk.

‘Would you care to come along to my club and have a drink?’ he invited.

I accepted gladly. He told me that his van was parked in the next street, and we walked to it. I thought it odd that he did not use a car to come up to town, but supposed that he had bought some
heavy article and was taking it home. He got in first and opened the near door. A whiff of disinfectants, straw and sheep came out. I sat down on a worn, comfortable bucket seat and was painfully
pricked by a broken spring or a sliver of metal.