Chapter Fourteen

 

Sebastian had drawn back the curtains when he went to bed, and a little after half-past seven an entering shaft of sunlight touched his face and awoke him.  Outside the window there was a sound of birds and church bells, and between the little grey and white clouds the sky was so brilliantly blue that he decided, in spite of the deliciousness of his enormous bed, to go and do a little exploring before anyone else was about.

      He got up, took a bath, examined his chin and cheeks to see if there was any need to use his razor, and deciding that there was no need, dressed himself with care in a clean shirt, the newer of his grey flannel trousers and the less shabby of the two outgrown tweed jackets which his father had said must last till June.  Then, after giving his rebellious hair a final brushing, he went downstairs and out through the front door.

      Hardly less romantic than it had seemed under the moon, the garden revealed itself in all the details of its architectural design, with all the colours of its foliage and April flowers.  Six goddesses stood sentinel on the terrace, and between the central pair a great flight of steps went down from landing to paved and parapeted landing, down, between colonnades of cypresses, to a green lawn bounded by a low semicircular wall, beyond which the eye travelled down and on to a distant chaos of brown and rosy roofs, and, floating high above them, in the very centre of the vista, the dome of the cathedral.  Sebastian walked down to the bottom of the steps and looked over the retaining wall.  Below it stretched a sloping field of vines still leafless, like an acre of dead men's arms reaching up frantically towards the light.  And here, beyond the cypresses, grew an ancient fig tree, all knees and knuckles, with elbowed branches pale as bones against the sky.  What intricacies of blue and white when one looked up into it!  'Snatches of heaven,' he whispered to himself, 'seen through an ossuary.  A pendent ossuary of arthropods.'  And there were those church bells again, and a smell of woodsmoke and hyacinths, and the first yellow butterfly.  And when one walked back to the foot of the steps and looked up, it was like being inside something by Milton.  Like walking about in Lycidas, through one of the similes in Paradise Lost.  Majestic symmetries!  And at the top, on their high pedestals, Artemis and Aphrodite stood pale against the foreshortened façade of the house.  Beautiful, and at the same time slightly absurd.  The appropriate phrases began to come to him.

 

                                             Dian with dog, and Venus modestly

                                             Screening her pubic lichen and the green

                                             Moss on her limestone paps ...

 

And then suddenly he perceived that, without intending it, he had discovered the Open Sesame to his entire poem.  'Limestone' - it had come out casually, as a simple descriptive epithet.  But, in fact, it was the password to his unwritten masterpiece, the key and guiding clue.  And, of all people, old walrus-whiskered Macdonald, the science master, was his Ariadne.  He remembered the words which had roused him for a moment from the coma into which he habitually sank during his physics and chemistry lessons.  'The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is highly organized, whereas the stone is not.  The atom is a pattern, and the molecule is a pattern, and the crystal is a pattern; but the stone, although it is made up of these patterns, is just a mere confusion.  It's only when life appears that you begin to get organization on a larger scale.  Life takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of them like the stone, it combines them into new and more elaborate patterns of its own.'

      The others had only heard the oddities of old Mac's Dundee accent.  For weeks, 'the patterrns of uttoms' had been a standing joke.  But for Sebastian the joke had made some kind of obscure unrecognized sense.  And now suddenly here the sense was, clear and comprehensible.

      The primal pattern.  And then the chaos made of patterns.  And then the living patterns built up out of fragments of the chaos.  And then what next?  Living patterns of living patterns?  But man's world was chaotically ugly and unjust and stupid.  For that suffered itself to be carved into breasts and faces.  Whereas five thousand laborious years of civilization had resulted only in slums and factories and offices.  He reached the top of the stairs and sat down on the smooth flagstones at the foot of Venus's pedestal.

      'And human individuals,' he was thinking.  As living patterns in space, how incredibly subtle, rich and complex!  But the trace they left in time, the pattern of their private lives - God, what a horror of routine!  Like the repeats on a length of linoleum, like the succession of identical ornamental tiles along the wall of a public lavatory.  Or if they did try to launch out into something original, the resulting scrolls and curlicues were generally atrocious.  And anyhow most of them quickly ended in a smudge of frustration - and then it was linoleum and lavatory tiles, lavatory tiles and linoleum, to the bitter end.

      He looked up at the house and wondered which of all the shuttered windows was Mrs Thwale's.  If that horrible old hag really wanted him to take lessons in speaking, it would give him an opportunity of talking to her.  Would he have the nerve to tell her about Mary Esdaile?  It would obviously be a wonderful opening.  He imagined a conversation beginning with a witty and ironical confession of his own adolescent phantasies and ending - well, ending practically anywhere.

      He sighed, looked down between the cypresses at the distant cupola, then up at the statue above him.  What a curious worm's-eye view of a goddess!  A green iridescent rose beetle was crawling slowly across her left knee.  Or so it seemed to him.  But what would the beetle say it as doing?  Feeling the sixfold rhythm of its legs, the pull of gravity on its right side, the fascination of strong light on its left eye, the warmth and hardness of a surface diversified with pits and jagged stalagmites and vegetable growths, rank, but uninteresting since the smell was not one that made it, willy-nilly, cut round holes in leaves or burrow between the petals of flowers.  And what, Sebastian wondered, was he himself doing at this moment?  Crawling over what enormous knee?  Towards what future event, what premeditated flick of a giant's fingernail?

      He got up, dusted the seat of his trousers; then, reaching up, gave the beetle a little fillip.  It fell onto the pedestal and lay there on its back, its legs waving.  Sebastian bent down to look at it, and saw that its plated belly was covered with minute crawling ticks.  Disgustedly, he turned the creature over on to its feet and walked away towards the house.  The sun, which had passed for a moment behind a cloud, came out again, and all the garden glowed, as though every leaf and flower had been illumined from within.  Sebastian smiled with pleasure, and started to whistle the tune of the first movement of Susan's Scarlatti sonata.

      As he opened the front door, he was surprised to hear a confused noise of talk, and, stepping across the threshold, he found the hall full of people - half a dozen servants, two old peasant women with shawls over their heads, and a dark-eyed little girl of ten or twelve, carrying a baby in one arm and, with the other hand, holding by the feet, head downwards and inert, a large speckled hen.

      Suddenly they all fell silent.  From a dark vaulted passage on the right came a sound of laboured shuffling; and a moment later, walking backwards with a pair of grey-trousered legs under his arm, emerged the butler, and then, stooping under the weight of the body, the footman and the chauffeur.  One thick yellowish hand trailed palm upwards on the floor, and as the men turned to take their burden up the stairs, Sebastian caught sight of the black gape of an open mouth and two lustreless and discoloured eyes, fixed and mindlessly staring.  Then step by step the body was heaved up, out of sight.  Dangling from the child's hand, the speckled hen uttered a feeble squawk and tried to flap its wings.  The baby broke into crowing laughter.

      Sebastian turned and hurried away into the drawing-room.  The first animal reaction of surprise and horror had left his stomach turned, his heart violently beating.  He sat down and covered his face with his hands.  It was as bad as that ghastly time at school when old Mac had made them dissect the dogfish and he had been sick in one of the laboratory sinks.  And this was poor Uncle Eustace.  Suddenly snuffed out, reduced to the likeness of that awful Thing they had hauled up the stairs.  Like men moving a piano.  And it must have happened while he himself was sleeping, here, in this very chair.  Perhaps Uncle Eustace had called for him; and perhaps, if he had heard, he could have done something to save his life.  But he hadn't heard; he'd just gone on sleeping.  Sleeping like a hog, while the man who was his friend, this man who had been more decent to him than almost anyone he could think of, who had treated him with such extraordinary generosity ...

      Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, the thought came to him that now he wouldn't have his evening clothes.  Yesterday Uncle Eustace had promised; but today there was nobody to keep the promise.  It was goodbye to Tom Boveney's party; goodbye to those girls before he had even known them.  The whole structure of that particular set of daydreams - so rational and substantial since Uncle Eustace had pointed out the tailor's shop on the way from the station - disintegrated into less than nothing.  The pang of his disappointment and self-pity brought tears to Sebastian's eyes.  Had anyone ever had such bad luck?

      Then he remembered Uncle Eustace - remembered him, not as the dispenser of dinner jackets, but as that kindly, lively person who last night had been his friend and now was only a revolting thing - remembered, and was overcome by shame at his own monstrous selfishness.

      'God, I'm awful,' he said to himself; and to keep his mind on the real tragedy, he whispered the word, 'Dead, dead,' over and over again.

      And then suddenly he caught himself wondering what excuse he could invent for Tom Boveney.  That he was ill?  That he was in mourning for his uncle?

      A bell rang, and through the open door Sebastian saw the footman crossing the hall to the front entrance.  A few Italian phrases were exchanged and then a tall thin man, elegantly dressed and carrying a little black bag, was ushered up the stairs.  Evidently the doctor, called in to write the death-certificate.  But if he had been called last night, Uncle Eustace might have been saved.  And the reason why the doctor wasn't called, Sebastian reminded himself, was that he had been asleep.

      The servant came down again and vanished into the kitchen regions.  Time passed.  Then the clock on the mantelpiece gave vent to four ding-dongs, and struck nine.  A moment later, the footman entered through the library door, came to a halt in front of the chair on which Sebastian was sitting, and said something which, because of the distant aroma of coffee and fried bacon, the latter interpreted as an announcement of breakfast.  He said 'thank you,' got up and walked into the dining-room.  The nausea of surprise and horror had worn off, and he was feeling hungry again.  He sat down to eat.  The scrambled eggs were absolutely delicious; the bacon, crisp between the teeth and exquisitely pungent; the coffee, a dream.

      He had just helped himself for the second time to marmalade, when a luminous idea occurred to him.  That Degas drawing, which Uncle Eustace had given him ... What on earth could he do with it for the next few years?  Hang it up in his bedroom and have old Ellen complain that it was 'rude'?  Put it away until he went to Oxford?  But wouldn't it really be much more sensible to sell the thing and use the money to get a suit of evening clothes?

      The opening of the door made him look up.  Dressed in black, with white ruffles at the neck and wrists, Mrs Thwale had quietly entered.  Sebastian jumped to his feet and, hastily wiping his mouth, said good-morning.  With the sheet of notepaper she held in her hand Mrs Thwale waved him back into his chair, and herself sat down beside him.

      'You know what's happened, of course?'

      Sebastian nodded, guiltily.

      'One feels ... well, one feels almost ashamed of oneself.'

      He was trying to atone for not having given a thought to poor Uncle Eustace during the whole of breakfast.

      'You know,' he went on, 'ashamed of being alive.'

      Mrs Thwale looked at him for a moment in silence, then shrugged her shoulders.

      'But that's what living happens to be,' she said.  'The physiological denial of reverence and good manners and Christianity.  And you're not even a Christian, are you?'

      He shook his head.  Mrs Thwale continued with an apparently irrelevant question.

      'How old are you?'

      'Seventeen.'

      'Seventeen?'

      Once more she looked at him; looked at him so intently, with an expression of such disquietingly impersonal amusement, that he started to blush, and dropped his eyes.

      'In that case,' she went on, 'it's doubly silly of you to feel ashamed of living.  At your age one's quite old enough to know what the essence of life really is.  Shamelessness, that's all; pure shamelessness.'

      Her beautiful steel-engraving face puckered itself into a comic mask, and she uttered the delicate little grunt of her laughter.  Then, suddenly serene again, she opened her handbag and took out a pencil.

      'There's a whole sheaf of telegrams to be sent,' she went on in a calm, business-like voice.  'You can help me with some of the addresses.'

      A few minutes later the butler came in and announced that he had been able to reach Mr Pewsey on the telephone, and that Mr Pewesy had offered to make all the necessary arrangements for the funeral.

      'Thank you, Guido.'

      The butler inclined his head almost imperceptibly, turned and silently went out again.  The ritual of his service remained flawless; but Sebastian could see that he had been crying.

      'Well, that's a great relief,' said Mrs Thwale.

      Sebastian nodded.

      'All that rigmarole of funerals,' he said.  'It's too awful.'

      'But evidently less awful than the realization that dying is even more shameless than living.'

      'More shameless?'

      'Well, at least you don't putrify when you make love, or eat, or excrete.  Whereas when you die ...' She made a little grimace.  'That's why people are ready to spend such fortunes on last sacraments and embalmers and lead coffins.  But what about these telegrams?'  She looked back at her list of names.  'Mrs Poulshot,' she read out.  'Where can she be reached?'

      Sebastian was uncertain.  Aunt Alice and Uncle Fred were on a motor tour in Wales.  Better send the wire to London and hope for the best.

      Mrs Thwale took down the address at his dictation.

      'Talking of shamelessness,' she said, as she reached for another telegraph form, 'I knew a girl once who lost her virginity on the night of Good Friday, at Jerusalem - just above the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Now, what about your father?'

      'He left for Egypt yesterday evening,' Sebastian began.

      Suddenly through the open door there came a harsh imperious call of 'Veronica, Veronica!'

      Without answering or making any remark, Mrs Thwale rose and, followed by Sebastian, walked into the drawing-room.  A storm of shrill barking greeted them.  Retreating step by step as they advanced, Foxy VIII almost screamed his defiance.  Sebastian glanced from the dog to its mistress.  Her rouged face seeming more fantastically gaudy by contrast with the black of her dress and hat, the Queen Mother was standing, small and shrivelled, beside the stolid figure of her maid.

      'Quiet!' she called blindly in the direction of the noise.  'Pick him up, Hortense.'

      In Hortense's arms Foxy contented himself with an occasional growl.

      'Is the boy there too?' Mrs Gamble enquired, and when Sebastian came forward, 'Well, boy,' she said almost triumphantly, 'what do you think of all this?'

      Sebastian murmured that he thought it was terrible.

      'I told him only yesterday,' the Queen Mother went on in the same tone.  'No fat man has ever lived even to seventy.  Much less to any reasonable age.  You've sent a wire to Daisy, have you?'

      'It's going off with the others in a few minutes,' said Mrs Thwale.

      'And to think that that goose is inheriting everything!' exclaimed the Queen Mother.  'What can she do with it, I'd like to know?  All Eustace's pictures and furniture.  I always told Amy not to let her have everything.'

      Suddenly she turned on the maid.

      'What on earth are you standing here for, Hortense?  Go away and do something useful.  Can't you see I don't need you?'

      Silently the woman started to go.

      'Where's Foxy?' shouted the Queen Mother in the direction of the retreating footsteps.  'Give him to me.'

      She held out a pair of jewelled claws.  The dog was handed over.

      'Little Foxy-woxy,' Mrs Gamble rasped affectionately, bending down to rub her cheek against the animal's fur.  Foxy responded with a lick.  The Queen Mother cackled shrilly and wiped her face with her fingers, smudging the rouge across her sharp and rather hairy chin.  'Only fifty-three,' she went on, turning back to the others.  'It's ridiculous.  But what else could you expect with a stomach like that?  Boy!' she rapped out sharply.  'Give me your arm.'

      Sebastian did as he was bidden.

      'I want you to show me the place where he actually passed on.'

      'You mean ...?' he began.

      'Yes, I do,' barked the Queen Mother.  'You can stay here, Veronica.'

      Slowly and cautiously Sebastian set off towards the door.  'Why don't you talk?' Mrs Gamble demanded after they had walked a few yards in silence.  'I know a great deal about football, if that's what interests you.'

      'Well, not really ... I'm more interested in ... well, in poetry and things like that.'

      'Poetry?' she repeated.  'Do you write poetry?'

      'A little.'

      'Very peculiar,' said the Queen Mother.  Then after a pause, 'I remember one time,' she went on, 'I was staying at a house where Mr Browning was one of the guests.  I never saw anyone eat so much for breakfast.  Never.  Except perhaps King Edward.'

      They passed out of the hall into the dark little passage.  The door at the end was still ajar.  Sebastian pushed it open.

      'This is the place,' he said.

      Mrs Gamble let go of his arm and, still holding the dog, groped her way forward.  Her hand made contact with the washbasin; she turned on a tap and turned it off again; then groped on, touched and flushed the toilet.  Foxy began to bark.

      'Which was the Roman emperor?' she asked through the yapping and the noise of the rushing water.  'The one who passed on in the w.c.  Was it Marcus Aurelius or Julius Caesar?'

      'I think it was Vespasian,' Sebastian ventured.

      'Vespasian?  I never heard of him,' said the Queen Mother emphatically.  'It smells of cigar smoke here,' she added.  'I always told him he smoked too many cigars.  Give me your arm again.'

      They walked back through the hall and into the drawing-room.

      'Veronica,' said the Queen Mother, speaking at random into the darkness that constituted her world, 'did you ring up that tiresome woman again?'

      'Not yet, Mrs Gamble.'

      'I wonder why she didn't answer.'  The old lady's tone was fretful and aggrieved.

      'She was out,' said Mrs Thwale quietly.  'Giving a séance perhaps.'

      'Nobody has séances at nine in the morning.  And anyhow, she ought to have left somebody to take her calls.'

      'She probably can't afford a servant.'

      'Nonsense!' barked the Queen Mother.  'I've never known a good medium who couldn't afford a servant.  Particularly in Florence, where they're dirt-cheap.  Ring her up again, Veronica.  Ring her up every hour until you get her.  And now, boy, I want to walk up and down the terrace for a little, and you shall talk to me about poetry.  How do you start writing a poem?'

      'Well,' Sebastian began, 'I usually ...'

      He broke off.

      'But it's really too difficult to explain.'

      He turned and gave her one of his irresistible, his angelic smiles.

      'What a stupid answer!' exclaimed the Queen Mother.  'It may be difficult, but it certainly isn't impossible.'

      Remembering too late that she couldn't see his smile, and feeling very foolish indeed, Sebastian relaxed his facial muscles into seriousness.

      'Go on!' commanded the old lady.

      Stammering, he did his best.

      'Well, it's as if you ... I mean, it's like suddenly hearing something.  And then it seems to grow by itself - you know, like a crystal in a super-saturated solution.'

      'In a what?'

      'A super-saturated solution.'

      'What's that?'

      'Oh, well, it's ... it's the thing that crystals grow in.  But as a matter of fact,' he hastily added, 'that isn't quite the right metaphor.  It's more like flowers coming up from seed.  Or even like sculpture - you know: adding on little bits of clay and at last it's a statue.  Or, still better, you might compare it to ...'

      The Queen Mother cut him short.

      'I don't understand a word you're saying,' she rasped.  'And you mumble worse than ever.'

      'I'm awfully sorry,' he muttered, yet more inaudibly.

      'I shall tell Veronica to give you a lesson in talking the King's English every afternoon, while I'm having my rest.  And now start again about your poetry.