‘She seems to have forgotten you now.’
‘Yes. I wish I hadn’t come. Let’s go somewhere.’ Two fire engines drove up as we left and a host of helmeted figures joined the throng upstairs.
‘That chap, Blanche,’ said Mulcaster, ‘not a good fellow. I put him in Mercury once.’
We went to a number of night clubs. In two years Mulcaster seemed to have attained his simple ambition of being known and liked in such places. At the last of them he and I were kindled by a great flame of patriotism.
‘You and I,’ he said, ‘were too young to fight in the war. Other chaps fought, millions of them dead. Not us. We’ll show them. We’ll show the dead chaps we can fight, too.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘Come from overseas, rallying to old country in hour of need.’
‘Like Australians.’
‘Like the poor dead Australians.’
‘What you in?’
‘Nothing yet. War not ready.’
‘Only one thing to join — Bill Meadows’ show Defence Corps. All good chaps. Being fixed in Bratt’s.’
‘I’ll join.’
‘You remember Bratt’s?’
‘No. I’ll join that, too.’
‘That’s right. All good chaps like the dead chaps.’
So I joined Bill Meadows’ show, which was a flying squad, protecting food deliveries in the poorest parts of London. First I was enrolled in the Defence Corps, took an oath of loyalty, and was given a helmet and truncheon; then I was put up for Bratt’s Club and, with a number of other recruits, elected at a committee meeting specially called for the occasion. For a week we sat under orders in Bratt’s and thrice a day we drove out in a lorry at the head of a convoy of milk vans. We were jeered at and sometimes pelted with muck but only once did we go into action.
We were sitting round after luncheon that day when Bill Meadows came back from the telephone in high spirits.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s a perfectly good battle in the Commercial Road.’
We drove at great speed and arrived to find a steel hawser stretched between lamp posts, an overturned truck and a policeman, alone on the pavement, being kicked by half a dozen youths. On either side of this centre of disturbance, and at a little distance from it, two opposing parties had formed. Near us, as we disembarked, a second policeman was sitting on the pavement, dazed, with his head in his hands and blood running through his fingers; two or three sympathizers were standing over him; on the other side of the hawser was a hostile knot of young dockers. We charged in cheerfully, relieved the policeman, and were just falling upon the main body of the enemy when we came into collision with a party of local clergy and town councillors who arrived simultaneously by another route to try persuasion. They were our only victims, for just as they went down there was a cry of ‘Look out. The coppers,’ and a lorry-load of police drew up in our rear.
The crowd broke and disappeared. We picked up the peace-makers (only one of whom was seriously hurt), patrolled some of the side streets looking for trouble and finding none, and at length returned to Bratt’s. Next day the General Strike was called off and the country everywhere, except in the coal fields, returned to normal. It was as though a beast long fabled for its ferocity had emerged for an hour, scented danger, and slunk back to its lair. It had not been worth leaving Paris.
Jean, who joined another company, had a pot of ferns dropped on his head by an elderly widow in Camden Town and was in hospital for a week.
It was through my membership of Bill Meadows’ squad that Julia learned I was in England. She telephoned to say her mother was anxious to see me.
‘You’ll find her terribly ill,’ she said.
I went to Marchmain House on the first morning of peace. Sir Adrian Porson passed me in the hall, leaving, as I arrived; he held a bandanna handkerchief to his face and felt blindly for his hat and stick; he was in tears.
I was shown into the library and in less than a minute Julia joined me. She shook hands with a gentleness and gravity of a ghost.
‘It’s sweet of you to come. Mummy has kept asking for you, but I don’t know if she’ll be able to see you now, after all. She’s just said “good-bye” to Adrian Porson and it’s tired her.’
‘Good-bye?’
‘Yes. She’s dying. She may live a week or two or she may go at any minute. She’s so weak. I’ll go and ask nurse.’
The stillness of death seemed in the house already. No one ever sat in the library at Marchmain House. It was the one ugly room in either of their houses. The bookcases of Victorian oak held volumes of Hansard and obsolete encyclopedias that were never opened; the bare mahogany table seemed set for the meeting of a committee; the place had the air of being both public and unfrequented; outside lay the forecourt, the railings, the quiet cul-de-sac.
Presently Julia returned.
‘No, I’m afraid you can’t see her. She’s asleep. She may lie like that for hours; I can tell you what she wanted. Let’s go somewhere else. I hate this room.’
We went across the hall to the small drawing-room where luncheon parties used to assemble, and sat on either side of the fireplace. Julia seemed to reflect the crimson and gold of the walls and lose some of her warmness.
‘First, I know, mummy wanted to say how sorry she is she was so beastly to you last time you met. She’s spoken of it often. She knows now she was wrong about you. I’m quite sure you understood and put it out of your mind immediately, but it’s the kind of thing mummy can never forgive herself — it’s the kind of thing she so seldom did.’
‘Do tell her I understood completely.’
‘The other thing, of course, you have guessed — Sebastian. She wants him. I don’t know if that’s possible. Is it?’
‘I hear he’s in a very bad way.’
‘We heard that, too. We cabled to the last address we had, but there was no answer. There still may be time for him to see her. I thought of you as the only hope, as soon, as I heard you were in England. Will you try and get him? It’s an awful lot to ask, but I think Sebastian would want it, too, if he realized.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘There’s no one else we can ask. Rex is so busy.’
‘Yes. I heard reports of all he’s been doing organizing the gas works.’
‘Oh yes,’ Julia said with a touch of her old dryness. ‘He’s made a lot of kudos out of the strike.’
Then we talked for a few minutes about the Bratt’s squad. She told me Brideshead had refused to take any public service because he was not satisfied with the justice of the cause; Cordelia was in London, in bed now, as she had been watching by her mother all night. I told her I had taken up architectural painting and that I enjoyed it. All this talk was nothing; we had said all we had to say in the first two minutes; I stayed for tea and then left her.
Air France ran a service of a kind to Casablanca; there I took the bus to Fez, starting at dawn and arriving in the new town at evening. I telephoned from the hotel to the British Consul and dined with him that evening, in his charming house by the walls of the old town. He was a kind, serious man.
‘I’m delighted someone has come to took after young Flyte at last,’ he said. ‘He’s been something of a thorn in our sides here. This is no place for a remittance man. The French don’t understand him at all. They think everyone who’s not engaged in trade is a spy. It’s not as though he lived like a Milord. Things aren’t easy here. There’s war going on not thirty miles from this house, though you might not think it. We had some young fools on bicycles only last week who’d come to volunteer for Abdul Krim’s army.
‘Then the Moors are a tricky lot; they don’t hold with drink and our young friend, as you may know, spends most of his day drinking. What does he want to come here for? There’s plenty of room for him at Rabat or Tangier, where they cater for tourists. He’s taken a house in the native town, you know. I tried to stop him, but he got it from a Frenchman in the Department of Arts. I don’t say there’s
any harm in him, but he’s an anxiety. There’s an awful fellow sponging on him — a German out of the Foreign Legion. A thoroughly bad hat by all accounts. There’s bound to be trouble.
‘Mind you, I like Flyte. I don’t see much of him. He used to come here for baths until he got fixed up at his house. He was always perfectly charming, and my wife took a great fancy to him. What he needs is occupation.’
I explained my errand.
‘You’ll probably find him at home now. Goodness knows there’s nowhere to go in the evenings in the old town. If you like I’ll send the porter to show you the way.’
So I set out after dinner, with the consular porter going ahead lantern in hand. Morocco was a new and strange country to me. Driving that day, mile after mile, up the smooth, strategic road, past the vineyards and military posts and the new, white settlements and the early crops already standing high in the vast, open fields, and the hoardings advertising the staples of France — Dubonnet, Michelin, Magasin du Louvre — I had thought it all very suburban and up-to-date; now, under the stars, in the walled city, whose streets were gentle, dusty stairways, and whose walls rose windowless on either side, closed overhead, then opened again to the stars; where the dust lay thick among the smooth paving stones and figures passed silently, robed in white, on soft slippers or hard, bare soles; where the air was scented with cloves and incense and wood smoke — now I knew what had drawn Sebastian here and held him so long.
The consular porter strode arrogantly ahead with his light swinging and his tall cane banging; sometimes an open doorway revealed a silent group seated in golden lamplight round a brazier.
‘Very dirty peoples,’ the porter said scornfully, over his shoulder. ‘No education. French leave them dirty. Not like British peoples. My peoples,’ he said, ‘always very British peoples.’
For he was from the Sudan Police, and regarded this ancient centre of his culture as a New Zealander might regard Rome.
At length we came to the last of many studded doors, and the porter beat on it with his stick.
‘British Lord’s house,’ he said.
Lamplight and a dark face appeared at the grating. The consular porter spoke peremptorily; bolts were withdrawn and we entered a small courtyard with a well in its centre and a vine trained overhead.
‘I wait here,’ said the porter. ‘You go with this native fellow.’ I entered the house, down a step and into the living-room I found a gramophone, an oil-stove and, between them, a young man. Later, when I looked about me, I noticed other, more agreeable things — the rugs on the floor, the embroidered silk on the walls, the carved and painted beams of the ceiling, the heavy, pierced lamp that hung from a chain and cast soft shadows of its own tracery about the room. But on first entering these three things, the gramophone for its noise — it was playing a French record of jazz band — the stove for its smell, and the young man for his wolfish look, struck my senses. He was lolling in a basket chair, with a bandaged foot stuck forward on a box; he was dressed in a kind of thin, mid-European imitation tweed with a tennis shirt open at the neck; the unwounded foot wore a brown canvas shoe. There was a brass tray by his side on wooden legs, and on it were two beer bottles, a dirty plate, and a saucer full of cigarette ends; he held a glass of beer in his hand and a cigarette lay on his lower lip and stuck there when he spoke. He had long fair hair combed back without a parting and a face that was unnaturally lined for a man of his obvious youth; one of his front teeth was missing, so that his sibilants came sometimes with a lisp, sometimes with a disconcerting whistle, which he covered with a giggle; the teeth he had were stained with tobacco and set far apart.
This was plainly the ‘thoroughly bad hat’ of the consul’s description, the film footman of Anthony’s.
‘I’m looking for Sebastian Flyte. This is his house, is it not?’ I spoke loudly to make myself heard above the dance music, but he answered softly in English fluent enough to suggest that it was now habitual to him.
‘Yeth. But he isn’t here. There’s no one but me.’
‘I’ve come from England to see him on important business. Can you tell me where I can find him?’
The record came to its end. The German turned it over, wound up the machine and started it playing again before answering.
‘Sebastian’s sick. The brothers took him away to the Infirmary. Maybe they’ll let you thee him, maybe not. I got to go there myself one day thoon to have my foot dressed. I’ll ask them then. When he’s better they’ll let you thee him, maybe.’
There was another chair and I sat down on it. Seeing that I meant to stay, the German offered me some beer.
‘You’re not Thebastian’s brother?’ he said. ‘Cousin maybe? Maybe you married hith thister?’
‘I’m only a friend. We were at the university together.’
‘I had a friend at the university. We studied History. My friend was cleverer than me; a little weak fellow — I used to pick him up and shake him when I was angry — but tho clever. Then one day we said: “What the hell? There is no work in Germany. Germany is down the drain,” so we said good-bye to our professors, and they said: “Yes, Germany is down the drain. There is nothing for a student to do here now,” and we went away and walked and walked and at last we came here. Then we said, “There is no army in Germany now, but we must be tholdiers,” so we joined the Legion. My friend died of dysentery last year, campaigning in the Atlas. When he was dead, I said, “What the hell?” so I shot my foot. It is now full of pus, though I have done it one year.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s very interesting. But my immediate concern is with Sebastian. Perhaps you would tell me about him.’
‘He is a very good fellow, Sebastian. He is all right for me. Tangier was a stinking place. He brought me here — nice house, nice food, nice servant — everything is all right for me here, I reckon. I like it all right.’
‘His mother is very ill,’ I said. ‘I have come to tell him.’
‘She rich?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t she give him more money? Then we could live at Casablanca, maybe, in a nice flat. You know her well.? You could make her give him more money?’
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘I don’t know. I reckon maybe he drink too much. The brothers will look after him. It’s all right for him there. The brothers are good fellows. Very cheap there.’
He clapped his hands and ordered more beer.
‘You thee? A nice thervant to look after me. It is all right.’ When I had got the name of the hospital I left.
‘Tell Thebastian I am still here and all right. I reckon he’s worrying about me, maybe.’
The hospital, where I went next morning, was a collection of bungalows, between the old and the new towns. It was kept by Franciscans. I made my way through a crowd of diseased Moors to the doctor’s room. He was a layman, clean shaven, dressed in white, starched overalls. We spoke in French, and he told me Sebastian was in no danger, but quite unfit to travel. He had had the grippe, with one lung slightly affected; he was very weak; he lacked resistance; what could one expect? He was an alcoholic. The doctor spoke dispassionately, almost brutally, with the relish men of science sometimes have for limiting themselves to inessentials, for pruning back their work to the point of sterility; but the bearded, barefooted brother in whose charge he put me, the man of no scientific pretensions who did the dirty jobs of the ward, had a different story.
‘He’s so patient. Not like a young man at all. He ties there and never complains — and there is much to complain of. We have no facilities. The Government give us what they can spare from kind. There is a poor German boy with the soldiers. And he is so kind. There is a poor German boy with a foot that will not heal and secondary syphilis, who comes here for treatment. Lord Flyte found him starving in Tangier and took him in and gave him a home. A real Samaritan.’
‘Poor simple monk,’ I thought, ‘poor booby.’ God forgive me!
Sebastian was in the win
g kept for Europeans, where the beds were divided by low partitions into cubicles with some air of privacy. He was lying with his hands on the quilt staring at the wall, where the only ornament was a religious oleograph.
‘Your friend,’ said the brother.
He looked round slowly.
‘Oh, I thought he meant Kurt. What are you doing here, Charles?’
He was more than ever emaciated; drink, which made others fat and red, seemed to wither Sebastian. The brother left us, and I sat by his bed and talked about his illness.
‘I was out of my mind for a day or two,’ he said. ‘I kept thinking I was back in Oxford. You went to my house? Did you like it? Is Kurt still there? I won’t ask you if you liked Kurt; no one does. It’s funny — I couldn’t get on without him, you know.’
Then I told him about his mother. He said nothing for some time, but lay gazing at the oleograph of the Seven Dolours. Then:
‘Poor mummy. She really was a femme fatale, wasn’t she? She killed at a touch.’
I telegraphed to Julia that Sebastian was unable to travel and stayed a week at Fez, visiting the hospital daily until he was well enough to move. His first sign of returning strength, on the second day of my visit, was to ask for brandy. By next day he had got some, some how, and kept it under the bedclothes.
The doctor said: ‘Your friend is drinking again. It is forbidden here. What can I do? This is not a reformatory school. I cannot police the wards. I am here to cure people, not to protect them from vicious habits, or teach them self-control. Cognac will not hurt him now. It will make him weaker for the next time he is ill, and then one day some little trouble will carry him off, pouff. This is not a home for inebriates. He must go at the end of the week.’
The lay-brother said: ‘Your friend is so much happier today, it is like one transfigured.’
‘Poor simple monk,’ I thought, ‘poor booby’; but he added, ‘You know why? He has a bottle of cognac in bed with him. It is the second I have found. No sooner do I take one away than he gets another. He is so naughty. It is the Arab boys who fetch it for him. But it is good to see him happy again when he has been so sad.’