Hungry Hill (31 page)

“It’s given you your life, for one thing.”

She laughed, and his heart smote him because she had so little knowledge of his true character, his selfishness, his vices, his utter want of principle.

“I’ve always understood,” he said, “that I was a seven months’ child. Perhaps that is why I lack all the virtues. And the nicest member of my family died the day I was born, my aunt Jane, who might have made something out of me. She was to have been my godmother. I think you are a little like the portrait of her that hangs in the dining-room at Clonmere.”

“I suppose,” she said, “that you would not like me for a godmother instead?”

He stared at her suspiciously. What the devil was she driving at? The words would have sounded flirtatious, inviting, from anyone else, or deliberately provoking from an older, clever woman. But from Katherine Eyre they were unique, because they were sincere. She looked at him with her calm brown eyes, and once again she smiled.

“Are you afraid I should play the governess?” she said. “I promise you I would never do that. But if my godson had twists I should want to help him unravel the knots.”

Johnnie had forgotten the rest of his family, forgotten the people in the dining-room and the passing waiters, the bustle and confusion. It seemed to him that there was no one but his tortured, angry, resentful self, and the blessed, healing presence of Katherine Eyre.

“You are a very unusual person,” he said slowly. “I wish to God I had met you before.”

“We are going to see a lot of one another from now on,” she said, “so the future will make up for the past. You must come and stay with us in Slane.”

Why, wondered Johnnie, was she so gracious to him, so kind, as though it mattered to her what became of him, as though she cared for him in some strange personal way, who had only met him an hour before? If he could think for one moment that there was to be someone in life who would bother about him, help him, smile at him, talk to him, why then there was hope indeed. She had asked him to stay in Slane. Did the Eyres live in Slane ? He could not remember. How unusual she was, lacking all ordinary convention, and yet bearing no resemblance to the fluffy little coquettes with whom he amused himself in London. Yes, he would go back to his own country, he would stay with Katherine Eyre and her family in Slane, and perhaps, after he had seen a bit more of her, there would be some purpose in living after all. She would be merciful and kind, and if he shouted, and swore, and drank, and lost his temper, she would forgive him. That was what he needed more than anything in the world. Forgiveness. Mercy.

And now Henry was getting up with a glass in his hand, looking proud and happy. His brother supposed there was to be another toast. And Henry said: “Mother, Fanny, Bill, Johnnie and Edward, I have another announcement to make. Today I am the happiest of men because Katherine has promised to marry me. And the wedding is to be in Slane, in two months’ time.”

Everyone was smiling, everyone was talking at once, and there was Edward patting Henry on the back, and Fanny leaning across to Katherine Eyre and kissing her, and his mother saying, “But Katherine, my dear, how very delightful,” and Bill apologising for two Eyres in their family all within twelve months. Johnnie heard his own voice loud and hearty, saying, “Congratulations, old boy; you deserve to be happy, God bless you,” and suddenly the atmosphere became unbearable-the pleasure on all their faces, the quick discussion of plans, the women, all excited and eager, talking about wedding-dresses and bridesmaids and God knows what, and Henry looking across with confidence and pride at this Katherine who was to be his bride, his comfort, his loved one… .

“You’ll be my best man, old fellow, won’t you?” said Henry, and Johnnie pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

“Not on your life,” he said rudely. “I don’t know how to behave in church; you’d better get Edward, or summon Herbie down from Liverpool, then there’ll be two chaps there in dog-collars.

No, I’ll stand in the street outside, and throw an old slipper at your carriage as you drive away.”

He saw the sudden hurt expression in his brother’s eyes, and the inevitable flicker of a question, “What’s wrong with Johnnie now?” that he had seen so often before, as a child, as a boy, as a man. It’s no good, thought Johnnie; I always hurt people, I always make them unhappy; I spoil every party; it would be much better if I went. I don’t belong to this sort of happy family atmosphere anyway.

Let Henry marry his Katherine. He is the right sort of fellow for her. They will make one another happy. And she will give him peace and understanding. As for me, I can make my own peace, in my own way, and if it’s black oblivion from a bottle or a tart, what the hell does it matter to anyone?

“Sorry to break the evening,” he said, “but the fact is I’ve just remembered I promised to see someone at nine. And anyway, you’ll all enjoy yourselves far better without me.” He drew a couple of sovereigns from his pocket and dropped them on his brother’s plate. “My dinner,” he said.

“Goodnight, mother.”

And he walked slowly out of the dining-room, conscious that people were turning to stare at him and one or two were smiling, were raising their eyebrows, and one of them lifted a glass significantly. God damn them, he thought, God damn and blast the whole bloody lot of them.

Mechanically he took his hat and his coat and his cane from the attendant in the vestibule. The rain had ceased and there was a wind now, cutting and cold. He walked down the street; here came three fellows arm-in-arm, walking up the pavement towards him.

He expected them to break apart and give him passage, but either they did not see him or they did not choose to do so, and without hesitation he walked into the midst of them, throwing one into the gutter, and the other against the wall, and the third he elbowed into a lamppost.

“Now go and learn manners, will you?” he cried, and the three, too astonished to retaliate, shouted after him, and one man bellowed out for a policeman, but by the time his call was answered, and a crowd had collected, Johnnie was away down the middle of the road.

“Where am I supposed to be going?” he said to himself, and then he remembered his excuse to the family, the engagement at nine o’clock. Well, it was true, now he came to think of it: his colonel was giving a reception at his house in Grosvenor Street. The same pompous old fool who had hummed and hawed that morning, and said that under the circumstances, and it was very painful for him to have to say so, but he hoped Johnnie would realise ‘

“They shall have the pleasure of my company, if they so desire it,” he said. He rocked unsteadily on the pavement, smiling to himself, and on the opposite side of the street a cab rumbled by. He summoned it with a flourish of his cane. “No .11 Grosvenor Street,” said Johnnie.

It was rather pleasant leaning back in the cab, with his head against the cushion, and it seemed to him that the cab arrived in Grosvenor Street far too soon.

He climbed carefully from his seat, and paid his fare.

The lights shone brightly from the house, and there was a red carpet down from the front door to the pavement. A crowd of people had collected outside in the street to watch the arrival of the guests. The door opened for a moment to admit one of Johnnie’s brother officers and his wife, and then closed again, “

“Ere, ain’t you got a wife, mister?” said a girl at Johnnie’s elbow.

He took off his hat and bowed.

“Unfortunately not,” he said, “but would you be good enough to accompany me instead?”

The girl screamed with laughter. She was a little painted prostitute who had walked up from Piccadilly to see the fun.

“What would they say to me if I went inside?” she chaffed.

“That’s exactly what I would like to know,” said Johnnie. “Will you come with me? Or are you afraid ? I’ll give you five pounds if you do.”

The girl laughed nervously, and another woman, her companion, pulled at her arm.

“Come away,” she said. “Don’t you see the gentleman’s tipsy?”

“Tipsy be damned,” said Johnnie. “I’m roaring drunk if you want to know. Here, what about this 8? And he shook five sovereigns in his hand.

“All right, I’ll do it,” said the girl boldly. “Let go, Annie, will you?”

Johnnie offered her his arm, and rang the bell.

Once more the door opened, and a powdered footman stood within the entrance. A hum of voices greeted Johnnie and his companion. Men in uniform and women in evening dress thronged the stairs. At the head of the stairs on the landing, Johnnie caught a glimpse of his white-haired colonel and his stately wife.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” said Johnnie to the girl beside him.

“Vera,” said the girl, hanging back, “Vera Potts… . You’re not going to take me up there, are you, mister?”

“I most certainly am,” said Johnnie. He handed his hat and coat with a bow to the second footman, who was whispering to his colleague in great agitation. “Have the goodness to announce us,” said Johnnie, moving forward to the stairs. “Captain Brodrick and Miss Vera Potts. Hullo, my dear Robin, how are you?

And your wife? Delighted to meet you. I don’t think you have met Miss Potts. Miss Potts, Captain Sir Robert and Lady Frazer. This way, Vera my dear ?

People were falling back against the stairway as Johnnie elbowed his way forward, the girl still clinging to his arm. Johnnie himself could see with difficulty, but he was aware of many heads turned towards him, of several blank expressions, of someone calling to him from the hall below in a voice of extreme urgency, but he felt himself possessed of great power and self-confidence. Now his colonel’s head was turned towards him, and the conventional smile of greeting froze on the lips of the colonel’s wife, as her outstretched hand, in its long white glove, fell before the grubby paw extended to her by her uninvited guest.

“Good evening, Mrs. Greville,” said Johnnie, “good evening, sir. May I present Miss Vera Potts, of the old firm of Potts, Piccadilly?”

“Please to meet you, I’m sure,” said his companion.

Mrs. Greville had the distant, far-away expression of one who has received a blow between the eyes, and for one moment Johnnie thought she might faint. But she recovered magnificently, she bowed, she murmured.

The colonel was unmoved. He greeted Johnnie with courtesy, and shook hands with Johnnie’s companion. Only the little pulse beating in his forehead betrayed his inner feelings.

“Morton,” he said, to a crimson-faced young subaltern at his elbow, “I think Miss Potts would be happier outside. Would you have the goodness to see her to the door? There is another staircase, through the landing there, on the left. Thank you. And will you, Frazer, and somebody else, hail a cab and take Brodrick home? I am afraid he is not very well. ‘?

“On the contrary,” said Johnnie, “I am exceedingly well. And I myself will conduct Miss Potts to her friends. Good evening, sir.”

He bowed, he offered his arm once more to his companion, and together they sailed down the staircase and into the hall, stared at by a hundred faces; and so his hat and his coat and his stick again, and out on to the red carpet with the door slamming behind them… .

Later, much later, Johnnie pulled aside the curtains in his room in Pall Mall. The morning was foggy and grey. For a while he could not remember what had happened the night before, and he reached for the flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. He felt better after a moment or two, and his eye fell on the sleepy form of Vera Potts, who was lying on his bed. Strange, he had no recollection of anything after leaving Grosvenor Street. He went into the sitting-room and stared vacantly about him. There was his coat, and the much-trimmed hat of Vera Potts, and the fur she had worn about her neck. He took another sip from his flask. Then he noticed a telegram lying on the desk. He put out a shaky hand and opened it. When Vera Potts came into the room, looking for her things, she found Johnnie sitting before his desk, the telegram open in his hand. He was staring straight in front of him.

“What’s up?” she said. “Not bad news, is it?”

He did not seem to hear her. He was watching the grey December fog break upon the world outside.

“My grandfather’s dead,” he said slowly. “That means Clonmere is mine.”

The funny thing was that he still felt that the library belonged to the old man, and when he opened the drawers of the great roll-top desk, or turned a key in the book-case, he did so with a certain uneasiness, as if Copper John might walk into the room at any moment, and stand there with his hands behind his back, his eyes narrowing under his thick eyebrows, and demand in cold, measured tones what his grandson was about. The place smelt of him. It was grey, austere. And Johnnie knew that he could never sit there, never write letters with any sense of ease because of the shadow of his grandfather, looking over his shoulder.

The thing was ridiculous, of course. His grandfather had not been to Clonmere for more than six years. And Johnnie tried to picture him, that old deaf man of eighty-four, living with his housekeeper-wife at Lletharrog, waiting for death to claim him, seeing no one, writing to no one, except once a month with great regularity to the manager of the mines on Hungry Hill. Surely there was nothing fearful about that distant figure, sitting day after day in the living-room of the farm-house? And yet Johnnie shuddered, for no reason, and he would shut up the roll-top desk, and push away the chair, and leave the library to the cobwebs and the dust, and go out into the sunlight. There was a queer anti-climax in returning home. All his life he had waited for this moment, dreamt about it, planned for it, and now that it had come the savour was lost to him, the excitement was no longer there. “It’s come too late,” he thought, wandering about the grounds, listening abstractedly to what the agent had to say.

“It’s come too late. I no longer care. This should have happened ten years ago, then it might have been worth while.” The agent had an irritating manner; he was a fellow called Adams. Johnnie did not know him, and he kept referring to Henry all the time, as though the place had come to him, and not to Johnnie at all. “Yes, Captain Brodrick, your brother, Mr. Henry, ordered those trees to be planted; he was staying here last summer, with the other young gentlemen, when you were abroad.” And then, “Mr. Henry suggested that the farm-buildings should be repaired, and he settled the dispute between old Baird and the new man; he decided Baird was really too old for the job, and he engaged the present man, Phillips.” And, “Mr. Henry used to go up to the mines fairly frequently. I rather think the letters referring to the business have been going to him.”