Real life’s about to begin for her, as it is for me. ‘We all have to die.’ He regretted the callous remark, but its brutality calmed her: ‘I know. It’s the only consolation I have.’
‘I would like to look into his study some time.’
‘Not till after the funeral.’
Such peculiar fancies should be allowed to someone in a state of shock. ‘Why ever not, though?’
‘He must have known a stroke was coming on. I heard this weird noise, but thought he was just reorganizing his books. He did, from time to time. In fact you might say he did it endlessly. It calmed him. And he liked the room to be tidy. But when I found him I saw he’d made a bit of a mess. I’ll never know why.’
She didn’t bother to stop him when he walked towards the stairs. The tobacco smell from years of puffing was strong but stale, and the door wouldn’t open its full arc, some obstacle preventing it. Her tone set off an alarm in him: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to push.’
He slid through the gap, couldn’t go right in for fear of increasing the wreckage. If his father hadn’t found the maniacal energy maybe the stroke wouldn’t have gripped him in such a vice. He might have halfway recovered and been in a wheelchair, the vilest horror to him. Or perhaps he sensed the inevitable, hoped it wasn’t certain even so. He had tried to head it off by an animal rage against the injustice of death, or even against fear which had dragged out his utmost violence, giving him astounding strength.
Herbert found the curved pipe snapped in two behind the door, its bowl filled with slightly charred tobacco, as if Hugh’s last wish had been to fill it and light up to face the end in familiar comfort. Finding the onset too quick, he had broken it before crushing half a dozen others underfoot and attacking everything else in the room.
Books and papers had been pulled from shelves, broken and torn. An orang-utan gone mad. Tables and chairs upturned, smashed, ripped, thrown, kicked, whirled about and trampled as if a fragmentation grenade had done its work. Not one piece belonged to any other.
He walked over paper and glass and set a chair on its legs, put the mahogany table back in place, awestruck at the damage yet lightheaded with satisfaction that in old age his father had shown there to be more than one part to himself. At the same time as immersing himself in this wilful mayhem he had stacked maps and notebooks in a corner and left them – for me, Herbert knew.
He smiled, as if within the one seam that mattered he knew the old man almost as well as he knew himself, and in some quirky way even better. In his fight to the death Hugh had been influenced by a barbarous dignity at the iniquity of having to die, but within it had left a final message saying that he also had lived his life as two people. Unable to give in to it he had waited till the last moment to make the gesture.
Maud stood behind. ‘Now you know. But it wasn’t like his true self to do such a thing. He was never like that. Not in a million years. A week ago he told me about a pain at the top of his head. Only lasted a few minutes, while he was in the garden. He said it was like a small plate of steel pressing into his skull. Then it went away. I wanted him to get a check up, and he said he would if it came back.’
When everyone had gone from the funeral, a deadly calm set over the house. Lord of the manor – though his mother might dispute that – Herbert sat in the lounge. Two bottles of the best Languedoc had been finished at dinner, and he felt more than half drunk, while noting that his mother could soak it in like a trooper. ‘He couldn’t have had a better send-off,’ she said ruefully.
Some of the mourners had looked curiously at him because he wasn’t in the army, thinking what a pity he wasn’t made of the same stuff as his father. It was good that the old world stayed with us a bit to be written about. ‘Yes, it was quite impressive.’
Such a verdict confused her, though maybe there was more of Hugh in him than she had supposed. ‘That novel of yours, Herbert, it’s very skilful, and I was amused by some of it, but I can’t really feel people live like that, these days.’
An uncompromising retort was squashed. ‘Father knew they did. They were his soldiers in both wars.’
She was happy at the mention of Hugh. ‘I suppose they were. He was glad to know you had the decency not to use your real name. He appreciated that.’
The unceremonious attack needed no response. Maybe calling himself Bert Gedling had been nothing more than a long march towards finding a pseudonym – all that his deception and exile had been for. If so, what a waste. ‘Did he like the book?’
‘Yes, said it was first rate.’
‘I’m sorry he didn’t tell me.’
‘He knew I would. Probably didn’t think you needed to be told. On one level he was disappointed in you, but on another he was proud.’
You can’t have everything, nor did he expect it. ‘Are you going to stay on here, Mother?’ He pulled another cork and filled both glasses, to dull his pain but most of all hers. ‘Let’s drink to Father. He’d like that.’
She laughed, whinnying and tearful. ‘We’ve drunk to him already, but if we do it again I know he won’t mind.’
‘You could get a flat in Chelsea,’ he said, lighting a cigar of his father’s. ‘We’d be able to meet nearly every day.’
‘I belong here.’ She looked around to confirm that the furnishings would support her. ‘It’s only a few miles from where I first set eyes on your father.’
‘The house is rather large, though.’ A bloody mausoleum that should go under the hammer.
The swig she took was enormous. ‘I’m a soldier’s widow. We know how to manage. But what are your plans for the future?’
A widow could meddle more openly. He didn’t care about the future. Living a few days ahead had always been good enough, the only way possible. ‘I’ll go on as I am, and come and see you when I can. You’re only a couple of hours or so from Town.’
‘And if it were five or six?’ she smiled. ‘Don’t feel obliged. I wouldn’t put up with that.’
The cat used his stretched-out legs as a ramp to get on to his lap. Stroking its silky fur, he wanted to go on talking, as if his father’s death made him more voluble. ‘I see myself earning a living as a writer. But I can’t be bothered to think about the future, which has a way of looking after itself.’
‘It’s a healthy attitude,’ she said. ‘That’s how Hugh looked at life, and why he was so happy – or at least never unhappy.’
‘I may get married, though. Deborah’s her name.’
This interested her enough to pick up the glass again. ‘Is that who you were on the phone to yesterday? You were talking in a rather strange voice.’
‘I’m in love with her.’ He wanted, as Archie would say, to go in raw. A new dimension was needed in his life, deepening attachments to give fresh limits to his nerve ends. ‘She works at my publisher’s.’
‘Is she from a good family?’
‘Good enough. You’ll like her.’
‘I’m sure I shall.’
‘And she’ll like you.’
‘Do you know, darling, you really do remind me of your father.’ She giggled, stood up, swayed and, just as he was beginning to think she’d got a bit too light-headed, sat down again: ‘Got to surround Blue Force by morning!’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Oh, it’s what your father said when I first met him, and he wasn’t able to stay when my father asked him to tea.’
He poured more wine. ‘I can just imagine him saying it.’
‘You fill your glass too near to the brim, dear.’
‘Sorry.’ He was amazed at getting so drunk with his mother. ‘I’ll check it next time.’ Back in Town he would disown Bert Gedling and become entirely his Herbert Thurgarton-Strang self, give out who he was, and see how they – whoever they were – liked it. They may not be so interested to know, though his next book would still be pseudonymed Bert Gedling, since there was no point in losing the advantage of that. Maybe he would walk into Humphries’ office with a bottle of smelling
salts and tell him straight out. Or he would get him to arrange a set-piece press conference and, performing a languorous recitation in the voice of his birthright, relate the real story of his life, so that, forced to believe, they would bray for his soul with howls of execration. Such a confrontation would be quite unnecessary, but he spun out the fantasy for his mother’s enjoyment.
‘I’d want to be there. Hugh would have, I’m sure of it. He would have been proud of you.’
‘Never mind, Mother. Don’t cry.’
‘Why not, I should like to know?’
‘Because we’ve got to surround Blue Force by morning!’
Life was good when they could laugh in the midst of death. He was crying at last, drunk, maudlin, the handkerchief from his lapel pocket in time to stop tears spoiling his waistcoat. He told himself not to be so damned weak. ‘I’ll stay on a few more days. Deborah will come up for the weekend.’
‘I’d like to meet her. It’ll give me time to get sober, sober enough to drive you both to the station anyway. She can have the room next to Hugh’s study.’
‘I thought you were a woman of the world, Mother.’ He looked into her grey eyes, lines around them lost in the dimmed light. ‘We don’t bother about such things as separate rooms these days.’
‘I want her to have her own room, and feel like a proper guest. What you would do in the night would be your own business.’
‘Mine will be more than adequate for us both. As for driving to the station, we have our own transport now.’
‘All right, darling, I won’t say anything more. I know times have changed, since the war especially. And I don’t want to lose you, Herbert.’
He envied her directness. ‘You’ll never do that, and you know it.’
‘You’re all I’ve got.’
True it was, and the circle had come around, stopped spinning and closed. He didn’t really know how to feel about it.
Deborah’s grey Mini nosed its way up the drive. He opened the door. ‘Glad you found the place.’
Gentle auburn waves came out from her parting, telling him she’d been to the hairdresser’s. White blouse and brown Liberty’s scarf at the neck, beige skirt and laced brown shoes were right for meeting his mother. ‘You look wonderful, darling. Let’s go this way.’
‘You sounded so mysterious on the phone. But what is all this about anyway?’
He led her on a slow circuit around the house. ‘I want you to meet my mother, and stay with us for a few days.’
‘Your mother? You said she was dead.’ If not, maybe she works here, and he was ashamed of it. There was no sign of Bert in him today, though he could turn it on and off like a tap. ‘Is she the housekeeper?’
He wondered how long it had been since a genuine loud laugh had ascended over the grounds. ‘Good Lord, no! We own the place.’
She stopped, and looked at him. ‘You said something on the phone about not being who you were supposed to be. Well, I’d gathered that much already. I’d been waiting for you to tell me for weeks,’ though she hadn’t felt it could be as important as what seemed on its way.
‘It was difficult,’ he said, passing the neglected old summerhouse. ‘I really had to hang on until now. If I’d told you cold you might have thought it just another of my impersonations. Dominic knew, almost from the beginning. He never gave me away, though he threatened to. We went to school together.’
She was pale with loss, and chagrin, showing a new Deborah. ‘I can’t believe any of this.’
‘I ran away from school when I was seventeen, went to Nottingham and worked in a factory. It was the best way to hide. After the army I drifted back there, and turned into a workman, you might say.’
‘Well, I suppose someone like you might say anything.’
There was nothing but to go on remorselessly. ‘I stayed at the factory. I don’t know why, but the years rolled by. I wrote the novel to keep myself sane. And that’s it. You know it now.’
The wind was warm, but she felt cold. He kissed her, and she pushed him away. ‘It’s just not feasible.’
‘I hoped it wouldn’t hurt you when I told you.’
‘Hurt?’ He was obviously telling the truth. ‘I’m bloody blasted. And this is your family home?’
Not wanting to feel a worm, he became blasé. ‘Yes. I thought you’d be pleased. Thurgarton-Strang is my real name.’
She’d heard the name but couldn’t think where, picked a flower from the clematis, crushed it and let the petals drop. ‘I didn’t fall in love with a liar.’
‘I never lied. I became someone else, but I wasn’t so mean and despicable as that.’ The chariot was weaving out of control, and he felt himself fighting for his life. ‘I just did what I had to do, otherwise I’d probably have killed myself. I’ve been thinking about it. I had to become two people so as to be even one. As far as I know I’ve harmed no one, but I’m more than glad to give up all the Bert Gedling stuff. I only hoped it wouldn’t make any difference to our relationship when I did. Maybe I put it off because I thought it might, out of funk. No, not that, either. I just waited, and let the right time come along.’
‘Your time, not mine.’
‘Well, there never was any right time.’ How could there be? He saw a tear in her left eye, found it touching and gratifying, if not promising. She wiped it away angrily. He cleaned a white chair by the edge of the lawn with his handkerchief. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
A touch of Gedling there. Or was it? He forgot the ‘duck’. ‘Damn you,’ she cried. ‘I have to get used to you all over again.’ She had noticed the obituary of Brigadier-General Thurgarton-Strang in the office Times last week, and now she knew who he was. Bert Gedling’s father. It was almost laughable.
‘Not entirely, I hope. There was a lot of me in Bert Gedling, as you’ll probably find out. One person’s very much like another, after all, when you rub the paint off.’ Which he was sure she would be able to do, though he would take care always to be one move ahead.
She had speculated on whether his father had been a postman, or a shoemaker, or a plumber – he’d never given a straight answer – but to prophesy this had been beyond sensible reach. From a mixture of self-disgust and pique she thought it might not be difficult to stop feeling superior to him, which she had done in some ways. It was unjust that he’d been responsible for that. She supposed her father would be happy to meet the present version of whoever he was, but could she trust Herbert when, as he said (and she felt it was true) there was so much of Bert Gedling in him whether he had played the role or not? Thoughts rushed through her mind. Anyone from his class who had acted the workman for so long was bound to be unpredictable for the rest of his life, and even if he hadn’t been a workman he would still have been someone to be wary of.
‘All I know’, he was saying, and she couldn’t disbelieve him, ‘is that “love is not love which alters when it alteration finds”. Or it shouldn’t be.’
‘You call that alteration?’
The chariot needed final and expert guidance at the reins, and couldn’t be allowed to break up. He stroked her hair, ran a finger over her lips, and felt the wet grass through the knees of his trousers. ‘It’s the best I can do. I love you. That’s all I’m trying to say. You’re the love of my life, and we’re made for each other. I knew it from the moment I saw you.’
Maybe getting to know the rest of him would be more interesting than putting up with the single phenomenon of Bert Gedling, and she wasn’t the sort of girl to eschew an adventure. ‘And I certainly love you,’ she said, contemptuous of all caution.
He stood up. ‘Ah! Here’s my mother, coming from the garden. And she’s carrying the vegetables.’
Deborah was also glad of a reason to stand. ‘She looks as if she needs some help.’
Back in London, he would take down the picture of Phoebus Apollo and put it in the dustbin. ‘Yes, she is rather like Ceres laden with abundance.’
The old folks had been assiduous in doing what they could
to control the grounds and garden, which were ruinous and overgrown. A man from the village had helped, but he had died six months ago, and no one else was forthcoming.
‘He was a thieving old devil,’ Maud said. ‘He took most of our tools, over the years. I expect his son’s using them now. But you can see why we didn’t say anything. It was too much work for Hugh. I do want to keep up the summerhouse, though. He loved to sit there and drink his whisky in the evening.’
Deborah said he ought to do something about it, so Herbert paced the large lawn, wondering where to start. A tree overhung the summerhouse, coating the reinforced glass roof with leaves and seeds. His mother was right: if it wasn’t pruned the force of vegetation would crack the guttering, and the place would crumble.
He fetched a ladder from the garage, a handsaw and a pair of the strongest clippers, wondering where to start on the tangle of growth. Roll up your sleeves, to begin with, and put on an old cap of your father’s. That done, he attacked the tree’s outriders methodically, going round and round and slowly closing in, as if reducing the sinews of a besieged fortress. The trunk was too close to the wall of the summerhouse to get the ladder between, but he erected a platform of wooden boxes and sawed through overhanging branches.
Cut them from a tree on one side, and they would grow more forcefully out of the other. Enjoyment was part of the process, a renewal of his habit of labour. To reach the highest python-like limb he leaned with all the strength of his right arm against the roof and, with his left extended to the utmost, sawed through with a measured forward and backing of steel teeth, every second hoping that the boxes beneath his feet would keep their stability. The strength of his arm did not let him down, and he felt a certain pride at the force and endurance of his muscles.