The Syme Papers (42 page)

‘Sir Postman,’ I cried, sunning myself, in gallant spirits. ‘Mein
Herr Mercury. What bird is that, there in the sycamore, the brown
one with the dirty red breast, looking up, as it were, for rain – the
gloomy fellow?’

‘That’, said the postman, an Irishman, intoning his words as a
miser counts coins, one by one, ‘bird is – a robin!
’

‘Don’t be a fool, man, a robin’s a chit of a bird, red as apples, no
bigger than thumb and forefinger. That brute could hire blackbirds
to polish his beak.’

‘If that bird ain’t a robin,’ said the postman, working out the
impossibility of it in his entire body, a contortion that began with
his knees and developed alarmingly in his elbows, ‘I ain’t a post
man’ – he could think of no greater absurdity – ‘and that’, he added,
throwing a bundle at my feet, ‘ain’t post!’

‘Pity then,’ I said, scratching the side of my nose, quietly. ‘Robins
have always meant bad luck to Müllers – I mean, the German kind,’

So out of a blue sky, the bolt fell.

The postman had not budged, stood above me, casting a long, thin
shade. He liked to see his handiwork enjoyed. ‘I could do with shade
myself, just a spot,’ he said, as I broke the seal.

His left arm scratched the small of his back without bending. He
wanted a moment to breathe in peace and talked to me as I read, in a
soft buzzing brogue like flies in the afternoon sun. ‘To think of the
long way that’s come. A man brought that to the post who don’t even
speak our language. I doubt he rightly knew where Pactaw was, even
if he had heard of Virginny. A thousand such-like passengers rode
with that letter to Baltimore to unload in a country that don’t understand ‘em. Then to find its way here, to a man such as yourself taking
his ease on a sunny afternoon. It’s a miracle of sorts, a long shot.’

I did not answer, for the shot had found its mark. It was a letter
from my father.
 

A cloud flew across the sun and the long nose and dim eyes of the
sweating Irishman fell into clear relief. A fly drank from a crack in 
his cheek and I wished he would go away. ‘That’s grateful to us‚’ he
said, wiping his brow. ‘Not bad, I hope?’

‘Pressing,’ I answered shortly, without moving.

‘It’s never as pressing as it seems,’ he said, and after a period of
rude silence on my part bent his long legs to the road again. An hour
passed and I did not shift from my seat, in that empty space around a
grieving heart as vast as the sky around the sun. The ink smudged in
my damp hands as I read the letter again and again. I knew my father
would make light of even the gravest misfortunes; and that this
touched him deeper than he let on, and upset certain plans he had
nursed, secret even from his son, I also guessed. But, like Tom, he had
a head for heights (or so I consoled myself) that was proof against low
concerns and swarming irritations. And shall I tell you a most curi
ous notion that lay uppermost in my thoughts as I waited for my
companions to return? That somehow I had been
caught out,
like a
schoolboy, for playing truant, and must return now, heavy-hearted,
to receive my beating. That the
game
was up, and had proved little
more than a game, after all. The shadows grew great as trees and the
tired feet of Tom and Sam, limping beneath their heavy packs,
trudged up the path from the fields before I raised my head.

Sam was in a black mood; I could see that at once. Tom put a
finger to his lips, a sign of caution more than silence. I presumed the
usual causes: the day’s tests had gone badly; Tom’s patience had
stung him; his shoes fitted ill and he was weary of the heat … Sam
needed no great reason for a rage that would satisfy an army of
injustices. I was about to give him ample room for a windy grief.

‘A good day’s hunt?’ I asked, as they left their packs at the foot of
the porch and sat beside me. I could taste the sour smack to my
voice, like spit on silver or cheer on misery. Sam said nothing, and
Tom answered, provoked himself perhaps, ‘A perfectly foul bright
blue summer day.’

‘If you will make a fool of yourself – do it in your own affairs,
Tom – if you have any,’ Sam replied with warmth. ‘And the first
trick is this – let a woman come.’

‘Kitty, the baker’s daughter, is a pretty girl, as you know,’ Tom
explained to me calmly. ‘With a neat hand. As the business was 
close by, I thought she could meet us with a picnic and ease the
time. Even make herself useful, which she did. Sam had the misfor
tune to spill a cup of cider on her notes, so that the ink ran, and we
have to start from scratch in the morning.’

‘Only a fool would set a cup in the grass – an inch away from a
long day’s work.’ I guessed his anger had another and deeper fear
behind it, perhaps of losing Tom.

‘She did not expect elephants to come by, as we are only in
Virginia,’ Tom said.

‘This is not a game for schoolboys and their sweethearts – or
picnics in the sunshine. It is my life’s work and if you cannot
make it yours, Tom, I do not need you. I asked you not to bring
her; enough. You know well that if Kitty had not met us – a day’s
work would not have been lost.’

‘A day more or less should not matter‚’ I broke in at last. ‘We are
bankrupt.’

Tom, in fact, took the news best, with a heart attentive to my
private grief Perhaps he was glad of it, and wished me gone and
Syme to himself again, but the gift of consolation requires a subtle
eye as well as a warm hand, and Tom had both. ‘You say that your
father would never breathe a word if he could help it, Phidy. But he
cannot you see. As the case affects us, he must tell us, though it
were nothing but a dip in fortune.’

‘There is more,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘and worse, I am sure.’

Sam had stormed off, remarking, ‘It needed only that,’ in a dry
tone. My anger rose against him, until I learned pity from Tom.

‘He does not have the stomach for disappointment‚’ Tom offered
by way of apology. ‘If he had, we should not love him, though he
might love the rest of us the better. To be plain, I have had enough of
Sam Syme myself today, but now is not the time to turn from him.’

Sam was in a rage in good earnest that evening. The night was
cold under a clear sky, and Tom lit a fire for comfort. Syme drank
too much at supper and the fumes of wine and the close hot air
inflamed his temper, dry already, and he began to talk. He railed at
Tom, at my father, at Kitty and me, at Mrs Simmons. ‘Stuck here in
this hole – the plaything of a sailor’s widow – and not the only one 
by all accounts.’
He railed at himself. I think in every great man
there is a kind of underground movement, a seditious sect that
clamours for failure like a radical for the government’s downfall It
is the trembling of revolution. ‘Only this would be a fitting injus
tice!’ he seemed to cry
–
misery, scorn, imprisonment, betrayal, not
the simple disappointment of being stony-broke. These black moods
sharpened his sense of life. For Tom and me, they were as good as a
high wind. Syme had such powers that even his anger could restore
our faith, and his rage pricked my spirits to new life, after the blow
they had taken at my father’s news.

The two were closeted for over an hour after supper in Sam’s bed
room, a broad, bare chamber across the hallway from what we called
‘the tavern’. I sat in the latter, listening to Sam shout and Tom (for
once) match him word for word. Some of these reached me, muffled
by the wall: ‘bad luck’ several times, and ‘useless’ too, then ‘I’ll be
the judge of that’; at last from Tom, and this repeated, ‘Well, then,
you must show him’ – show him or tell him, both came up. There is
nothing as dreadfully lonely as a great argument in another room.
My only comfort at hand lay in the company of those two men, who
scarcely thought of me, I suppose. My father was an ocean away and
I could only guess the position of his affairs. Sam’s predicament sur
rounded me and his anguish roused my blood.

At ten o’clock, the two entered, Sam’s anger was spent, and he sat
down quietly as if abashed by his former violence – his eyes seemed
thick but with that curiously sleepy look of a victor. ‘I would like to call
to order a council of war,’ Tom began, in a dry voice, as if pressed to a
reluctant duty. Nevertheless, my heart thrilled at being included in the
debate. ‘Phidy, I have a question to put to you, that may touch some
what near the bone. I am sorry if it does, but this cannot be helped.’