A Disturbing Influence (20 page)

It was late, the last bottle was empty, they were ready to go.

‘Shall I do something about the fire?’ said Dennis.

‘Oh, leave it.’

They took the narrow path back to the shingle beach, Allen carried in David’s arms, either asleep or passed out.

‘How are we going to get him back?’ said Dick.

‘Leave that to me,’ said David. ‘Let’s go.’

They waded out into the water, still warm and glittering with
the moon, still bright, though sinking now, still probing at the white bodies moving steadily just below the surface. Allen drifted without movement, apparently, on his back, in the wake of David’s head, still asleep, perhaps, though his eyes were open, staring at the faint but definite stars, his limbs without any sign of life, trailing after him like tendrils.

*

Later, after Brigadier Hobson had gone home, trying to warm himself with the certainty that no outrage had been committed that night, anyway, after the six men had landed and dressed, the gate had been opened and closed, the car had gone, the large island in the middle of the lake began to glow. Soon it was ablaze, the
heat-wave
having dried it out, prepared it for fire. As the flames mounted they seemed pale and phantom-like, for dawn was already bright in the eastern sky, and the reflected fire in the water became lost in the new day. The flames became invisible as the sun shone on them, and after an hour the only sign that fire had raged and was burning still was a thin drift of smoke, and winter-black branches against another cloudless sky. The island looked as though it had been curiously left out of the normal rhythm of the seasons, and kept still a January caution amid the lush profusion of June.

I
T WAS
a pleasant surprise to see David at breakfast. He had been out seeing his friends the Donaldsons again the night before—he spent a good deal of time over at Chancelford—and he found breakfast too early for him most mornings. But when I got back from Holy Communion he was reading the
Sunday
Times
in the dining-room.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you gave me quite a shock, David. We’re not used to seeing him at this uncivilized hour, are we, Mrs Crawley?’

‘I don’t know what you mean by uncivilized, Mr Henderson,’ she said, ‘I’m always up by seven.’

David smiled and said: ‘Good morning, Raymond. Did you have a nice service?’

I had painfully accustomed myself to his total ignorance of things religious, so I contented myself with saying: ‘Services are neither nice nor nasty, David. They are services.’

‘I was thinking, Raymond, that perhaps you’re right, one should go to church to see if one can’t find something in it.’ I winced, but he went on: ‘I thought I’d come to Morning whatever-you-call-it today, if you don’t mind.’

‘I should be delighted, of course,’ I said, and I was, I really was. He was a very baffling young man in some ways, incomprehensible at times, and he could shock me very easily with some of his ideas. But then he could be very charming and thoughtful, too. It was just that I sometimes felt I wasn’t making contact with him at all.

‘And by the way,’ I said, ‘you may as well call it Matins.’

‘Matins. I see. Matins.’

Mrs Crawley brought in scrambled eggs and bacon. She was very fond of him, I think, and had taken my instructions to fatten him up almost too literally. There were always quantities of food going back to the kitchen. And however much he ate, he remained exactly the same weight, to Mrs Crawley’s dismay.

‘I have been thinking, Raymond, that I ought to go home soon. I’ve been here more than a month, and I can’t tell you how much better I feel for it. But I can’t impose on you for ever.’

‘Oh, don’t say that. I’m glad you feel the country’s done you some good, but there’s no need to feel you have to go. It’s a real pleasure to have you, David. It’s been very lonely here since Isobel—since your aunt died.’

I hadn’t seen very much of him, to tell the truth, and he was always out somewhere, but he had made the house seem more lived-in. He could be very disconcerting, and I don’t know how much he was responsible for the sudden moments of doubt that afflicted me that summer—he may well have started me on that soul-searching which is still going on—but however baffling he could be, I had enjoyed having someone to talk to occasionally. Of course, he hadn’t been properly educated, and he didn’t have the background of an ordinary English young man, and I had to make allowances.

‘No,’ he said, having made up his mind in advance, it seemed, ‘I came here to convalesce, Raymond, and I’m really very much better. Convalescence makes me very restless. I’d like to live a little now.’

That was typical of him, he would say something very pleasant, and then undercut it with a remark that made me feel he could not have been sincere. He was really rather a difficult person to
understand
, after a lifetime of Cartersfield. But I was sure he meant well, and was simply telling the truth. There was little enough for a young man to do in Cartersfield, and after he’d pulled a muscle in his back he couldn’t even play tennis with Jane Gilchrist, though it
didn’t seem to stop him swimming. And I knew what he meant about convalescence. It’s like wanting to scratch a scar—the scar
itches
because it’s healing, I believe. It’s a sign one is really getting well. So I made no very great effort to stop him going.

‘When are you thinking of leaving?’

‘I really don’t know. Tomorrow, perhaps. I’ll ring Mildred
tonight
and see what’s going on.’

It seemed a little sudden, but I said ‘Good idea’ and we left it at that.

We walked together to church as the bell began to ring, and he was courtesy itself, inquiring about who was in the choir, and
showing
an interest in Cartersfield, now that he was leaving, that he had never shown before. The young these days are really rather
mysterious
to a man of my age, without children of my own, and they all seem to do things the wrong way round. But, like David, they are polite, even if they don’t seem to make very good sense.

It was quite a good congregation, reduced as always by fine weather, though there were one or two absentees. Allen Bradshaw wasn’t there, for one. He almost always came, not, alas, so much to pray as to wait for his girl friend, Ruth Stevens, who was in the choir. And then Dick Thomson was missing among the basses. But he wasn’t very reliable, and I suspect he enjoyed his Saturday evenings more than his Sunday mornings. Most notably absent was Brigadier Hobson, who usually read the second lesson, while James Gilchrist read the first. Evangeline Hobson was there, though, and I spoke to her before the service began. She whispered something about explaining to me afterwards, so I asked Gilchrist to read the second lesson, too, which he seemed delighted to do. He read very well, if rather sententiously, but in a good loud voice that made people listen.

My sermon was topical, about the many blessings we have to be thankful for, and I made good use of the current heat wave to make my point. So much of the time people expect God to answer their particular desires, and the vicar to pray for whatever vagary of
weather the farmers may want—and it differs from farmer to farmer and from week to week—but a really fine spell is something
everyone
appreciates, provided it doesn’t go on too long, and we should be grateful when one comes. And I pointed out how people become much more agreeable and charitable when there’s a good spell of fine weather, and that we shouldn’t make this charitableness a seasonal thing, dependent on cyclones and anti-cyclones, but should try to follow Christ’s example and make fine-weather charity and agreeableness an all-the-year-round habit. It’s not a difficult metaphor to develop, and I ended comparing Christ to the sun, circling us always, even when He seems invisible because of clouds or darkness.

Afterwards James Gilchrist came up to me outside and said: ‘That was an excellent sermon, Vicar, really very good.’

‘I’m much obliged to you for taking on the second lesson at such short notice.’

‘It was a pleasure,’ he said, modestly. ‘We haven’t seen much of your nephew lately. Where have you been keeping him?’

‘It was such a pity, pulling a muscle like that,’ I said. David wasn’t there for the moment. ‘He really enjoyed playing tennis with Jane.’

‘He wasn’t bad at all,’ said Jane.

Just then David came out of the church and blinked round at us in the bright sun.

‘Where have you been? Mr Gilchrist was wondering why he hasn’t been seeing much of you recently.’

‘I was just taking a last look at those misericords,’ he said. Then he shook hands with Gilchrist and Jane. (Mrs Gilchrist never came to church, she said she couldn’t bear to listen to her husband reading the lesson, it seemed all wrong somehow.)

‘Well, young man,’ said Gilchrist, ‘I hope you’re not responsible for these goings-on down at the gravel-pits, eh?’

‘Not my sort of entertainment, sir,’ said David, smiling.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with the young these days,’ said
Gilchrist. ‘No spunk in them, no guts. Now I’d never tell him, but if I knew Edward had been doing something like that I’d be tickled to death.’

‘Oh, Daddy!’ said Jane. ‘You know you’d be furious.’

‘I’d be furious, yes. But secretly I’d be tickled to death. Now when I was young there used to be some guts around. We didn’t go round smashing up people’s bathing huts, but we did know how to live. They don’t know how to live these days.’

‘Do you really think so, sir?’ said David, politely. He did seem to have a little of that mockery in his smile that I found so disturbing at times, but then under the circumstances he had the right to be a little mocking.

‘Our only hope is the young of the country,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Young men like you and Edward. God help us if they’re all like Edward. You people have got to take on where we left off and go farther. If you can’t do that we’re finished as a country.’

‘Daddy, you sound just like a politician at times,’ said Jane, looking at David. He smiled at her, the smile of the league of youth. Actually, I believe he was rather fond of her, and she of him.

‘I don’t agree at all,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think youth is a terrible scourge. They really visit the sins of the fathers on the fathers’ heads. My Boy Scouts are simply impossible. It’s only since I’ve had David in the house that I realized there were some young people who weren’t absolutely intolerable.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to hear you don’t find David intolerable, too,’ said Gilchrist. ‘That’s what they’re for, the young. To push us old buffers out of the way. I’m sorry you weren’t one of Hobson’s vandals, David.’

‘He seemed to think I was.’

Jane never took her eyes off his face, and it occurred to me that the pulled muscle might have been an excuse to cover up some quarrel they’d had—some silly thing, probably, in which neither could give in because of youthful pride, but which both wished had never happened. If I was right, it seemed a pity.

Just then Evangeline Hobson joined us, saying: ‘I’m terribly sorry about the Brigadier, Raymond.’ She always called him ‘the Brigadier’ as though she was still an army wife and we were all junior officers. ‘He doesn’t feel too well today.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’

‘He’s a damned fool,’ she said. ‘He’s been sitting out by that lake for the last three nights with a shot-gun, trying to catch those hooligans. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got pneumonia.’

‘He told me that he felt too old to go after them himself.’

‘He did,’ said Evangeline, ‘until they swiped the second hut and planted it on that island. That was too much for the old boy. Well, I must be getting home to see how he is. He hates being in bed, but he’s really not too good today.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ we all said, though I suspect that some of us were really quite amused. I thought I saw a decided glint in David’s eye.

‘Well, ’morning all,’ said Evangeline, and walked briskly off.

‘Good for Hobson,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Now you see what I mean about the modern generation. They don’t have the sort of guts you need to sit up all night trying to catch hooligans. No spunk in them.’

‘He seems to have kept them away, anyway,’ said Jane. ‘They haven’t done anything recently, have they?’

‘Not that I’ve heard of, thank goodness,’ I said. She was a very pretty girl. It was a pity about David’s pulled muscle, real or imaginary.

‘We must get back,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Sunday lunch without a couple of sherries as appetizers just isn’t Sunday lunch. We’ll see you at Mendleton again soon, I hope,’ he said to David.

‘Well, actually I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But it’s
extremely
kind of you to ask. And it was great fun to visit Mendleton.’

They shook hands, Gilchrist saying: ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Jane’s even sorrier, I expect. She says you’re the only person within ten miles who can give her a decent game of tennis.’

‘Yes,’ said David, turning to her, ‘I shall miss that very much. It was great fun. But I’m sure she’ll find someone better.’

‘Good-bye,’ said Jane. She looked, I thought, very taken aback indeed.

We all shook hands again, and they went off, while David waited outside for me to change and pay Jim Nelson. Then we walked back to the vicarage. It really was a joy to see people sitting in their gardens enjoying the sun. Outside the Brunswick Arms there were a good many cars, too, and one could see through the passageway that people were having a good time in the neat little garden Sam Palmer kept there, with benches and tables. It wasn’t till we were almost home that we heard the bad news.

Bob Ransome, who was the porter at the station, was on his way to the pub, and he stopped to say ‘Good morning’ and tell us about it. Apparently the island in the middle of the largest gravel-pit had burnt to a cinder during the night. No one knew whether it had been caused by Teddy boys or was a natural catastrophe, but as Bob said: ‘It doesn’t seem likely to have just caught fire of itself, does it?’ I had to agree. It was really very bewildering. But at least it was only an island, and no one owned it or had anything on it. There was an owner somewhere, I suppose, but the gravel-pit had become public property almost by default since the gravel company had moved away. It did seem a senseless piece of destruction, though, whether by the hand of man or nature.

‘Didn’t anyone see it?’ said David. ‘It must have made quite a blaze.’

But apparently no one had, it had burned invisibly.

*

Next day David left by the morning train. He still seemed rather thin, and he wasn’t very sun-burned, though he had spent a good deal of time swimming and being outdoors, but he assured me he really felt very much better.

I couldn’t decide whether I was sorry to see him go or not. The
religious doubts that were plaguing me more and more demanded that I spend a good part of my day alone, trying to make up my mind. Doubt is a sort of disease, a wasting disease, and one is aware of it all the time as though one has some growth which interferes with one’s consciousness at all moments of the day and night. So I wished to be alone for a while, and for that reason I was not sorry to see him go. But at the same time I knew that I should be even more lonely after his departure than I had been before he came. To have another person in the house with one, even when that person is much younger, makes one feel in contact with—well, with the real world. Cartersfield seemed more and more remote to me that summer, after he had gone, and Mrs Crawley seemed only to emphasize my loneliness, my lack of connection. As the hot weather continued I found myself increasingly unable to sleep, and I ceased to notice how troubled the usually placid surface of Cartersfield life had become. There was a curious outbreak of drunkenness among the young men and pointless smashing of windows and fences. One or two people went away. Perhaps a heat-wave, as I’d said in my sermon, was only a blessing if it didn’t go on too long. Everyone seemed restless. When it rained at last, briefly, in September,
breaking
a serious drought, I think everyone was extremely relieved. England without a good deal of rain, even in summer, doesn’t seem altogether natural.