Hungry Hill (30 page)

Johnnie’s great-coat, and his service jacket, and his top boots. Nothing of interest there, although she liked to touch his clothes, and she let her hand rest lovingly a moment on the service jacket, with the ribbon on the breast. Poor darling! he had worn it out in that terrible Crimea; it was a wonder he had not been frozen to death. Idiotic fiasco. Why anyone had ever gone in for the thing was a wonder to her… .

Hullo, what was this? Something in straw stuffed behind the boots. Just what she expected. A bottle of port. And here was another, and another. All empty. She wondered where he kept the full ones.

She shut the cupboard, and opened the door into the little bedroom beyond. Nothing here, except his bed, and his wash-basin, and a chest-of-drawers. She hesitated a fraction of a second before opening the bedside cupboard. In it she found a bottle of whisky, half full. She shut it again, and went back into the sitting-room.

“If he must drink,” she said to herself, “why doesn’t he put it all out on the sideboard?

There’s nobody to see. Besides, I would not mind a glass of port myself.”

She drew her chair close to the meagre fire, and poked at the coals. Men had no idea of comfort, especially army men. They got so used to early hours and iron beds and general dreariness that they never seemed to expect anything else. Edward was just the same now he had entered the regiment too. Henry was different. He was the only one of the boys who really knew how to live. And Herbert, leaving Oxford to go and be a curate in that Liverpool slum, was quite beyond her. He had been such a bright, amusing little boy too. As for Fanny, well, it was exactly like her to marry a clergyman. Not that she had anything against Bill Eyre; he was a most worthy creature, and had some money too, and after all the Eyres were one of the oldest families in the country. But there was something about a clergyman. ‘ and slaughter that she could not believe him. Here he was though. The door burst open, and the darling boy came into the room.

“Forgive me, I’ve kept you waiting,” he said, going to her at once and taking her in his arms.

“Have they cropped you now?” she said, turning him about, and he laughed, showing his dark head, and bent it for her to kiss.

“If you had your way, mother, you’d have my hair on my shoulders still,” he said.

Johnnie at twenty-six was much the same as he had been at seventeen, but taller, broad-shouldered, though not as tall or as broad as his brother Henry, who outstripped him by two inches. His face had coarsened somewhat, his mouth had become more obstinate, and the expression in his eyes a little arrogant, a little watchful, as though he expected criticism and would squash it before it came.

“Well, what’s all the excitement?” he said.

“Why am I to take everybody out to dinner?”

“A celebration,” said Fanny-Rosa. “It’s really rather an honour. Henry has been made high sheriff for Slane, and he’s only twenty-four.”

“Good heavens!” said Johnnie. He was silent a moment, and then he laughed. “I always did know Henry had the talent of the family,” he said. “He won all the honours he could at Eton, and I did not achieve any. By all means let’s celebrate. I don’t grudge him his success.

High sheriff of Slane, is it? We must pull his leg about it.”

Fanny-Rosa was relieved. Sometimes she was just the smallest bit anxious that darling Johnnie might be jealous of his younger brother’s triumphs.

Everyone seemed to be so fond of Henry, in this country as well as across the water. He had hosts of friends. And wherever she went, “whether it was over there, or to stay with Eliza in Saunby, or here in London, people would seem interested when they heard her name, and say, “Are you the mother of Henry Brodrick? But how delightful to meet you! We are so devoted to your son.” She was glad and proud of course, and Henry was a dear no doubt, and very charming and good-looking, but she wished sometimes that it would be the other way about and someone would say, “I met your eldest son, Captain Brodrick, last week.

What a splendid fellow he is!” But no one ever did say that. Only once, in London, had she come across a man who knew Johnnie, and he had been very non-committal. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I did serve with him at one time, before the war… . Haven’t seen him since,” and then changed the subject. Once she had asked Edward, soon after her younger son had joined the regiment, whether there was any unfair feeling against his eldest brother. Edward had looked most uncomfortable.

“I don’t think so exactly,” he said, “but you see, poor old Johnnie has such a deuce of a temper, and he rubs fellows up the wrong way sometimes. They don’t mind him being as wild as a hawk, but they do object when he has too much port after dinner and calls everyone he sees a swine and a bastard.”

“Yes,” said Fanny-Rosa, “yes, I see.”

And yet, she thought, looking at this eldest son of hers as he brushed his hair before the mirror in his bedroom, how charming he could be when he wanted to, how affectionate, how lovable, and she was certain that his brains were the equal of Henry’s, but he did not bother to use them, any more than his father had done. As for his temper, well, that was her legacy, and anyway it showed spirit, a determination not to be beaten.

“We had better be going, Johnnie,” she said.

“I told the others seven-thirty.”

“Very well,” he answered. “There is a cab waiting, Dobson will see you into it. I shan’t be a moment.”

She went out into the hall, and, glancing back over her shoulder, she saw through the chink of the door that her son had opened the cupboard against the wall.

He’s going to have a glass of port, she thought.

I wonder how much he gets through in the day.

The janitor held the carriage umbrella over her head, and she stepped into the cab. Johnnie joined her in a few minutes. He was flourishing a handkerchief, and a wave of eau-de-Cologne filled the cab.

“What does this party consist of?” he asked, stretching his legs on the seat opposite.

“Only ourselves,” she said, “and Henry, and Edward, and Fanny, and Bill, and Bill’s sister Katherine, whom I think you have not met.”

“Is she as dull as Bill?”

“Don’t be unkind about your brother-in-law; I’m devoted to him, Katherine is most charming. I rather fancy Henry has an eye on her Be civil and charming to everyone, for my sake. And don’t make any remark about Fanny’s appearance. She is very sensitive.”

“Why the devil does she go out in public then?”

“She only does so tonight because of Henry. Then she and Bill are going off to Clifton, to await the arrival.”

“What a confounded wet night it is!” said Johnnie, peering through the glass, and rubbing it with his handkerchief, “and where in hell’s name does this fellow think he’s going? I swear he’s taken the wrong street. Here, you blithering idiot…”

He lowered the window, and began shouting at the driver.

Fanny-Rosa leant back and said nothing. This always happened, driving with Johnnie. Never yet had any cabman taken the right route. By the time they reached their destination he had cast doubt on the cabman’s parentage, his personal morals, his cleanliness, the fidelity of his wife, and all to the unfortunate fellow’s face. She began to wonder whether there would be a fight when they reached Port-man Square. But Johnnie suddenly changed his tone, gave the man an enormous tip and said he would not have his job for anything in the world, and giving his arm to his mother, he conducted her into the hotel, leaving the cabman red in the face, stupefied, and dumb.

Henry and Edward were waiting for them.

“The others will be down directly,” said Henry; “the girls arc titivating, as usual. How are you, old fellow? I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you.”

He shook hands with Johnnie, and kissed his mother.

The two brothers had not met for nearly a year.

“Greetings to the sheriff of Slane,” said Johnnie. “And how’s the law going, and the politics, and all your other interests?”

“Pretty well,” smiled Henry. “I believe in dabbling in as many things as possible. They want me to contest the seat at the next election, but I think I’ll wait a few years before I do that.”

Enterprising chap, thought Johnnie. Always a finger in somebody’s pie, but never being irritating about it. Here came Fanny, poor girl, looking grotesque, and the worthy Bill, and ‘

“This is Katherine Eyre,” said Henry. “My brother Johnnie.”

Charming, his mother had said, Johnnie remembered, but she had not told him she was beautiful. The smooth, dark hair, gathered in a low knot on the nape of her neck, the serene brown eyes, the cream-white texture of her skin, the whole impression of her, he thought, suggesting repose and quiet, someone withdrawn into herself who brought peace to the beholder. He found himself at a loss for words, and because he was not used to feeling shy before women he began to bluster, to give orders to the waiter in a loud voice, and when they came into the dining-room he complained about the position of the table; it was cramped against the wall, they must have the one in the opposite corner instead. Henry took charge and mollified the waiter. He gently teased his brother and changed the conversation, and soon they were all seated, Johnnie on the left of Katherine Eyre, and, rather than that she should think him a dullard and a boor, he at once plunged into a fantastic tale about the Crimea-she had asked some question on the war-hoping to impress her with its extravagance.

“I should like,” she said, “to have been out there and helped Miss Nightingale. Not so much because of the nursing-I hardly think I could have stood it-but because so many of the men must have felt lonely and unhappy and would want comfort.”

She looked at him and smiled, and he turned away, crumbling a piece of bread, because he was reminded suddenly of himself in that appalling shambles at Sevastopol, taking a very different sort of comfort in the arms of a slant-eyed, rather dirty little refugee, and how he had gone without whisky for five days and nearly died in consequence.

“I don’t think,” he said, “you could have done much good…”

And then he saw Henry staring at Katherine Eyre across the table, with such tenderness and adoration that Johnnie felt a strange despair come upon him, a feeling that he was an outcast, a pariah dog, who had no business to be sitting here with his brother and Katherine Eyre. They belonged to another world, a world where people were normal and happy, and had faith and confidence in the future. And above all faith and confidence in themselves.

“Here,” he said loudly, “no one’s drinking anything. Aren’t we going to toast the sheriff of Slane?”

And he thumped on the table for the waiter to attend them. The other people dining in the room turned round at the sound of his voice.

“Henry,” he said to Katherine Eyre, “gets his way by being polite to people. I get mine by doing the opposite ?

She did not answer, and once again he felt depressed and lost, not because there was any sign of disapproval in her eyes, or condemnation, but because the sight of her sitting there beside him made him wish to be different, someone who was quiet and peaceful like her* self. He felt that very possibly she considered it unimportant whether people got their own way or not, and that in any case to shout and to bluster was something she would never do.

There was his mother laughing and talking to Bill. She enjoyed life, anyway, and would continue to do so whatever happened, and Bill, that honest parson, chatted back politely to his mother-in-laws though no doubt he did not care about the dyed hair and the powdered face. Fanny, giving birth any minute, was like a mouse, and always had been; no chance of her ever breaking the peace; and Edward and Henry discussed the affairs of the day as though the words Conservative and Liberal meant anything at all. No, he was an outcast, and always would be, and no doubt everybody here, except perhaps his mother, wished that they could have dined without him, “Well,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “we have toasted Henry’s future as a sheriff, what about toasting mine as a civilian?”

There was a pause in the conversation. Everybody looked at him.

“What do you mean, darling?” said Fanny-Rosa.

“Only that I am leaving the regiment,” said Johnnie. “I sent in my papers today.”

At once a torrent of questions were flung at him.

What did he mean by it? And surely it was a pity, he had always said the life suited him, and one conventional phrase after the other. Only Edward, the other soldier present, made no comment. And Fanny-Rosa, with sudden intuition, wondered whether Johnnie had been re-quested to leave… .

“Oh, I’m fed up with the service,” said Johnnie. “All very fat and fine when there’s some fighting to do, but to stand about all day on a barrack square is not my idea of amusement. I’ve had it in my mind to leave for some time. What will I do? I haven’t the slightest idea, I shall probably go abroad. Anyway, what the devil does it matter? The fact is, Miss Eyre, I find it rather degrading, and not particularly profitable, to be six-and-twenty years of age with deuced little to live on, waiting for an old man of eighty-four to die and leave me all his money-was The speech made an uncomfortable impression.

His sister blushed. and glanced at her husband. His mother smiled a shade too brightly and began talking rather loudly to Henry about his plans for Christmas.

Only Katherine Eyre appeared unmoved. She looked up at Johnnie, her eyes grave and kindly.

“It is a very difficult position for you,” she said, “and must make you feel so unsettled. Don’t go abroad, though.”

“Why not?” said Johnnie.

“I don’t think you would be happy.”

“I’m not happy anywhere.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Nobody’s. It’s my misfortune to be cursed with the nature I have.”

“Don’t say that. You are really the most kind and generous person. I have often talked about you to Henry.

He is very fond of you.”

“Is he? I doubt it.”

“You like to make yourself out worse than you are. That’s foolishness. You ought to come across the water, and take an interest in your country.”

“What has my country ever done for me?”