The Pyramid (17 page)

A
stupid,
insensitive,
vain
woman.

They were two people whose ignorance and vanity made them suitable to, acceptable to no one but each other. It was a spyhole into them, and ugly balm to my soul. I listened; and I was free. I pushed my way against the tide down the stairs again and ran to find the man to whom I now owed so much. But he was not in the Running Horse or in any of the four other pubs on that side of the High Street. I came back towards the Town Hall, thinking that of course, he must be round in front, waiting for the final curtain.

But I was wrong for he was in the Square. I saw him from a long way away because he was almost under one of the sodium lights. He was holding the sharp points of the iron railing with both hands and hanging down from them. His spidery legs were folded, therefore; and as if the life of
vibration
and quiver was in them only, they still moved. His face, in profile against the railings, had not changed, was still pale, still wore its gentle smile. His legs were going for little tentative walks all by themselves, then coming back again as if they had realized they had left someone behind.

I had seen this particular phenomenon in the quad at Oxford often enough to realize what had happened. Clearly he was not going to be present at the final curtain. There was only one thing to do.

“Come on, Evelyn!”

He neither recognized me nor noticed me. I got hold of him round the shoulders and lifted him up. All his energy now seemed concentrated in his hands and I had to prise them away from the spearheaded railings. I half led, half carried him down the High Street; and there was the
Barchester
bus, the last one, waiting emptily.

The conductor did not much like the look of us, costumed as we were.

“’As ’e been sick?”

“He won’t be sick,” I said, laughing, “not Mr. De Tracy—will you, Evelyn?”

Evelyn made no reply. I got him inside, for he was docile now, and weighed nothing. I sat him carefully and
affectionately
on the long seat just inside the door.

“There you are!”

As if he were some object suspended in water; or as if this was some action habitual to him and now inevitable, Evelyn moved both hands to his right cheek, drew his knees up towards his chin, and at the same time rotated to the right through ninety degrees. He lay there, curled close, his face, his smile, his spot balls quite unchanged, as if this way of looking at the world was as good as any other; and when the engine started, its movement made his body shudder as if this unusual view of Stilbourne was only the last in a whole series of private entertainments.

The conductor was doubtful.

“I don’t know as ’ow—”

“He’ll be all right. By the time he gets to Barchester—”

But it occurred to me as the conductor rang his bell that I had only assumed and did not know for certain that he wanted to go to Barchester. I ran after the bus, therefore, shouting:

“Evelyn! Hey! Evelyn! You’re going to Barchester—”

But the bus beat me, humping itself over the Old Bridge, and grinding up the road towards the woods. I turned back, wondering whether I should go home, get money and take it to Mrs. Miniver. However, the sight of lights going out in the Running Horse decided me that she would have to wait till next day; and if the money was an impoverishment to me, I could always get it back when I saw Evelyn again, or when he wrote to me. I went to the stairs at the back of the Town Hall therefore and found them deserted. I climbed them, to find the stage empty too, though a subdued sound of voices came from beyond the curtain. I applied my eye to a
convenient
hole and saw how the cast, stage hands, musicians and friends stood about, drinking coffee. They were in several groups that did not seem to have much interconnection; and I realized with relief that the SOS could not function again for at least three years. I opened the curtains and stepped down to receive my congratulations.

S
TILBOURNE
it said; but not as I had ever seen the name before. “Stilbourne” used to be traced in cracked and fading black on the signposts, which always leaned and sometimes pointed wholly in the wrong direction. Shrubby trees, elder, blackthorn or maple hid them, so that they only yielded their unneeded information to hedgers and ditchers. They decayed, waiting in the lanes for the stage coaches that would never come.

This
STILBOURNE
could be read at a distance of half-a-mile. It stood by the motor road, white letters on blue; and I saw immediately that Stilbourne was like anywhere else after all. Satellites must scan or photograph it, in their mathematical progress from Omnium to Barchester, a small huddle of houses by a minimal river—a place surprised by the motor road, as a ploughman and his horses might be by a helicopter. My hands turned the wheel of themselves, and without
conscious
intention I found myself gliding down the spur to all those years of my life. Sure enough, there was the Old Bridge, humpbacked and grey and uneconomic like so much beauty. No one had widened it or smoothed out the hump—and swinglike I lifted over it, then stopped my car with the curved ascent to the little Square before me. I examined my heart for emotion but found none. The determination never to return, lest I should find my heart wrung or broken by dead things, this I found replaced by a no more than mild curiosity. I was wary perhaps, and willing to run away, if nostalgia became so sharp, so raw as to be unbearable, but the glass windows of my car made a picture postcard of the place. I could roll through it, detached, defended by steel, rubber, leather, glass.

Yet not all the High Street was the same. The right hand side, almost from the Old Bridge to the Square had been swallowed by concrete, plateglass, chrome. It was Henry, of course. The lettering stretched up the street, Williams’s Garage, Williams’s Showrooms, Williams’s Farm Machinery; and there, on the park which now lapped against the river, were examples of those objects by which Henry had changed us, haybalers and combines, tractors, hedgecutters in vivid orange or blue so that it was obvious how he prospered. Huge concrete pipes lay by the river, presently to swallow it, so that Henry would then face about and front on the motor road. I moved forward and pulled on the concrete apron by the pumps; and what Mark and Sophy have elected to call a “Petrol Lady” came towards me. She was plump and blonde, wore a white overall with “Williams’s Garage” embroidered over the left breast.

“Is Mr. Williams about?”

She replied that young Mr. Williams was up in London but that old Mr. Williams might be in the office. So I got out of my car; and immediately my feet touched the concrete, I felt them become adolescent, with nowhere to go or hide. I recognized immediately that this visit was a mistake; but before I could return to the security of leather and steel and glass, I heard his voice behind me.

“Master Oliver!”

He held my hand warmly, firmly, and for a long time; not shaking it, but moving it gently up and down, as if we were communing on the sadness of things in general. I had time to notice how little his thin face had changed—tanned, perhaps, by winter Egypt or Marrakesh—so sad it was, round the sad brown eyes that seemed always on the point of
overflowing
. Only his hair was different. It was snow-white.

“My dear Henry. You go from strength to strength.”

“We do what we can.”

“And the cars you’re selling! Nothing but the best.”

“Well now, Sir, if you’d like to change?”

But he had seen my car, past my shoulder. He let go my hand.

“Well, now then!”

There it was, confirming what was always indefinably audible in the run and juggle of his syllables, the almost parody Welshness of him, like a runnel clucking on the side of a mountain.

“I can see why not, with a car of that superior description—
well
now!”

My feet grew up a little. It was the first time in my life I was ever conscious of impressing Henry. His attitude was typical of the deep thing lying in him, the reason for it all, tarmac, glass, concrete, machinery, the thrust not liked or enjoyed but recognized as inevitable, the god without mercy. There was a tiny adjustment in his attitude. He was deferring to achievement without knowing precisely what it was; and I, my feet now firmly under control, was accepting this deference. I went with him to be shown round,
contemptuous
of the way in which our social antennae had vibrated; and it was only in the oldest part of the building, that I stopped before something that felt familiar even before I had worked out why. Here there were palms now, and potplants and soft lights, and among them, a turntable. On the
turntable
, brass radiator gleaming, coach lamps gleaming, old fuddy-duddy wheels newly tyred, hood folded back, was a vintage two-seater. It revolved with a crazy dignity like a dowager, presenting me now the offside, and now the radiator with the number plate below it.

I cried out.

“Bounce!”

“She let us buy it when she knew she was not going to use it any more. You can imagine we did not feel we could quibble over the price.”

“She’s dead, then.”

“Miss Dawlish passed on—oh nearly three years ago. She lies where she would have wished, within earshot of the organ. Dear, good lady!”

I had no more than half an ear for him. Nor was I
examining
the two-seater closely, though I seemed to. I was busy examining myself. These feelings, these emotions that seemed suddenly to expand in a luxury more suitable to the palms, the potplants—

“She lies on the south side of the church, near the
transept
. We felt some tribute, some—memorial was appropriate. You can’t miss it.”

“So Bounce is dead!”

“You were always devoted to her, weren’t you? I remember, indeed! You’ll want to pay your respects.”

I turned away from her car and looked at Henry. His eyes, as ever, were impenetrable in their frankness. You could never see round or through Henry. I felt myself, of all things, begin to blush as if I were a child again. I felt the power of his adult command.

“Yes,” I mumbled. “Of course. Yes.”

I took my obedient feet away from him and marched up the curved High Street to the Square. There was much new paint. They had washed the pillars of the Town Hall and painted the balcony glossy white. The grass in the centre of the Square, between the Town Hall and the church, was being cut noisily by one of Henry’s machines so that half was disciplined, and the other half a diminishing oblong of mutinous daisies. The old chainrails round the grass had gone for scrap, and the posts with them. The old railings in front of each house had gone, too, but left their stumps in the stone. The familiar houses, bulged, leaned or slumped slightly out of true, had turned all Chelsea, with eggshell blue and one door of vivid yellow. I thought, critically, but without much feeling, that Stilbourne had been prettied, like some senile old lady, made presentable for visitors. Between the grass and the houses, the glittering cars were parked with their bonnets at the verge, like cows at a drinking trough. My father’s cottage leaned against the doctor’s house, not like a place for living, but as a visible piece of country quaintness, photogenic and sterile. The chintz which flapped lazily in my bedroom window had nothing to do with me. Only the church remained the same, in its stark greyness. Someone was practising the organ; and this sound, combined with the chatter of Henry’s machine, reminded me of what I had come to see. I opened the lych gate and walked over the clipped grass between grey tombstones. I found Henry’s tribute easily, since it was white marble, no expense spared.

The first impression it gave, was one of sheer weight. There was a rectangular surround filled with white chips, and among the chips, a glass container of
immortelles.
At the head, was at least a ton of marble rhomboid; and, finest touch of all, this rhomboid had been carved with such a naturalistic representation of a harp, one might have thought the marble strings were vibrating in sympathy with the organ.

I looked round, wondering what I was supposed to do. One should know the appropriate formula. Was I supposed to be praying? How did one show respect? How do you show respect to clipped grass, chipped marble, the sound of an organ? The truth was, I was feeling glad to be alive and a little compunctious at my gladness. I sat on a more modest tombstone, my legs apart, and stared at the inscription below the harp, as if concentration on her name would take the place of a more knowledgeable ritual.

Three score years and ten. Nothing either way. Expected expectancy. However I read the name and the date, they said nothing more, suggested nothing more. I lowered my eyes to the chips, examined carefully the
immortelles
which looked so inappropriately like part of a wedding cake. It was only when I examined the nearer surround—looked down, in fact, almost between my separated feet—that I grasped the true thoughtfulness of Henry’s tribute. Here were three words in small lettering. They were placed there at the foot with exactly his modest assurance, his sense of position, of who was entitled to do what. Sitting on the lichened tombstone, with white marble before me, I fell into a kind of daze of remembering. They were not really Henry’s words, nor Bounce’s, though she used them often enough. They were her father’s. Fishing back, grinning wryly, as I sat there in the sun, I could just remember him.

Old Mr. Dawlish. He was one of those eccentrics a child will accept as part of the landscape. We had a number of them in Stilbourne. There was one, a deformed halfwit in a
wheelchair
for whom I felt no pity, since he was an object, like the horsetrough, or the illegible stone that lay against the town hall pillars. There was another, a strange lady wearing many skirts and a vast hat full of dead leaves so that she looked like an aged and emaciated Ophelia. Bounce’s father, old Mr. Dawlish, did not look as eccentric as these two, certainly. But he was noteworthy. He was a failed musician, rumoured to compose; but in fact he kept a music shop and tuned pianos. By some inheritance from our town’s complex interweaving, he owned not only the shop but also a house on the other side of the Square from my father’s cottage. He had inherited a little money; and this, combined with his property, made him wholly estimable. He played the organ in church until Bounce was old enough to take over. But most of his time, while a bored girl minded the shop, he walked, or lunged, rather, through the lanes and streets. He was a slight man, in pepper and salt, and he had a shock of white hair which flew and tumbled above a fiercely aesthetic face. Always he looked up and to the side, as if preoccupied with some absolute before which people were shreds and tatters. Now and then, as he lunged through the streets, you could hear him—swept up, just like Beethoven in some tempest of the mind—cry, or rather, caw aloud:

“Aaa—ah!”

It may have been, that finding himself entirely without talent, he was resolved to give at least one first-class
performance
out of
THE LIVES OF THE MASTERS
or turn himself into the portrait of a romantic musician from the brush of Delacroix. He believed, I came to know, in the New Woman, Wagner and Sterndale Bennett, though not in Mr. G. B. Shaw, or young Mr. Holst. Since he owned property, for all his eccentric lunges, he gave Stilbourne a painless excuse to feel that it was in touch with the arts as much as it ought to be. I noticed him first when I was so small my nurse was
pushing
me up the High Street from the Old Bridge to the Square in a pushchair. I was interested because there was a Poor Man standing at the corner with a battered pram. He had what was much more exciting than a baby in it—a curling green horn which ended in a wide, trumpet mouth. He was turning a handle below the horn with one hand and holding his cap out with the other. As we drew near I heard a most delectable sound coming out of the horn—
Honkety
tonk
ti
tonk
ti
tonk
!
I laughed aloud and clamoured to be unstrapped so that I could join the children who were dancing round him. This was impossible, of course, since it was a public place, and the children were ragged and dirty. But before I had done more than give a preliminary whine, excitement piled on excitement. Mr. Dawlish came lunging across the Square from the church, a stick in his hand, his white, artistic hair flying. He made for the dancing group, and the Poor Man switched from my nurse to hold his cap out in this new direction. Mr. Dawlish, cawing like a furious rook, brought his stick down on the turntable of the phonograph, and pieces of black stuff flew all over the place. The dancing children shrieked and laughed and clapped and went on dancing. My pushchair slowed; then shot by, as my nurse hurried past the group, keeping well to the inside of the pavement. Naturally I was slewed in the straps of my chair, trying to enjoy the sight as long as possible; and in the few seconds left to me I saw the sleepy, sunny street fill with people: Moore from the Ironmonger’s, Miss Dimble from the Needlework Shop, Mrs. Patrick from the Sweet Shop, three men from the Feathers, the smith with a smoking horseshoe at his halfdoor; these made a crowd in the middle of which white hair flew. There was no
honkety
tonk
any more, but only rook-cawing, and the bird-dweedle of children.

Now you may wonder how, at the age of three, I knew these people, their names and provenance; but a child’s retina is such a perfect recording machine that given the impulse of interest or excitement it takes an indelible snapshot. I did not know their names or where they came from. But I saw them numberless times later and compared them with the snapshot that lay in my head, and indeed, still lies there. I take the snapshot from whatever drawer it lies in and sort my impressions into two piles—one of primary, ignorant
perceptions
; the other a gradual sophistication which tells me the horseshoe was cooling, my own white shoes made of kid, and Mr. Dawlish a thwarted man, violently acting out his prejudices and the drama of his fruitless ambitions.