Читать книгу The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold - Evelyn Waugh - Страница 6

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MR. PINFOLD’S idleness has been remarked. He was half-way through a novel and had stopped work in early summer. The completed chapters had been typed, rewritten, retyped, and lay in a drawer of his desk. He was entirely satisfied with them. He knew in a general way what had to be done to finish the book and he believed he could at any moment set himself to do it. But he was not pressed for money. The sales of his earlier works had already earned him that year the modesty sufficiency which the laws of his country allowed. Further effort could only bring him sharply diminishing rewards and he was disinclined to effort. It was as though the characters he had quickened had fallen into a light doze and he left them benevolently to themselves. Hard things were in store for them. Let them sleep while they could. All his life he had worked intermittently. In youth his long periods of leisure had been devoted to amusement. Now he had abandoned that quest. That was the main difference between Mr. Pinfold at fifty and Mr. Pinfold at thirty.

Winter set in sharp at the end of October. The central-heating plant at Lychpole was ancient and voracious. It had not been used since the days of fuel shortage. With most of the children away at school Mr. and Mrs. Pinfold withdrew into two rooms, heaped the fires with such coal as they could procure and sheltered from draughts behind screens and sandbags. Mr. Pinfold’s spirits sank, he began to talk of the West Indies and felt the need of longer periods of sleep.

The composition of his sleeping-draught, as originally prescribed, was largely of water. He suggested to his chemist that it would save trouble to have the essential ingredients in full strength and to dilute them himself. Their taste was bitter and after various experiments he found they were most palatable in Crême de Menthe. He was not scrupulous in measuring the dose. He splashed into the glass as much as his mood suggested and if he took too little and woke in the small hours he would get out of bed and make unsteadily for the bottles and a second swig. Thus he passed many hours in welcome unconsciousness; but all was not well with him. Whether from too much strong medicine or from some other cause, he felt decidedly seedy by the middle of November. He found himself disagreeably flushed, particularly after drinking his normal, not illiberal, quantity of wine and brandy. Crimson blotches appeared on the backs of his hands.

He called in Dr. Drake who said: ‘That sounds like an allergy?’

‘Allergic to what?’

‘Ah, that’s hard to say. Almost anything can cause an allergy nowadays. It might be something you’re wearing or some plant growing near. The only cure really is a change.’

‘I might go abroad after Christmas.’

‘Yes, that’s the best thing you could do. Anyway don’t worry. No one ever died of an allergy. It’s allied to hay-fever,’ he added learnedly, ‘and asthma.’

Another thing which troubled him and which he soon began to attribute to his medicine, was the behaviour of his memory. It began to play him tricks. He did not grow forgetful. He remembered everything in clear detail but he remembered it wrong. He would state a fact, dogmatically, sometimes in print—a date, a name, a quotation—find himself challenged, turn to his books for verification and find most disconcertingly that he was at fault.

Two incidents of this kind slightly alarmed him. With the idea of cheering him up Mrs. Pinfold invited a week-end party to Lychpole. On the Sunday afternoon he proposed a visit to a remarkable tomb in a neighbouring church. He had not been there since the war, but he had a clear image of it, which he described to them in technical detail; a recumbent figure of the mid-sixteenth century in gilded bronze; something almost unique in England. They found the place without difficulty; it was unquestionably what they sought; but the figure was of coloured alabaster. They laughed, he laughed, but he was shocked.

The second incident was more humiliating. A friend in London, James Lance, who shared his tastes in furniture, found, and offered him as a present, a most remarkable piece; a wash-hand stand of the greatest elaboration designed by an English architect of the 1860s, a man not universally honoured but of magisterial status to Mr. Pinfold and his friends. This massive freak of fancy was decorated with metal work and mosaic, and with a series of panels painted in his hot youth by a rather preposterous artist who later became President of the Royal Academy. It was just such a trophy as Mr. Pinfold most valued. He hurried to London, studied the object with exultation, arranged for its delivery and impatiently awaited its arrival at Lychpole. A fortnight later it came, was borne upstairs and set in the space cleared for it. Then to his horror Mr. Pinfold observed that an essential part was missing. There should have been a prominent, highly ornamental, copper tap in the centre, forming the climax of the design. In its place there was merely a small socket. Mr. Pinfold broke into lamentation. The carriers asserted that this was the condition of the piece when they fetched it. Mr. Pinfold bade them search their van. Nothing was found. Mr. Pinfold surcharged the receipt ‘incomplete’ and immediately wrote to the firm ordering a diligent search of the warehouse where the wash-hand stand had reposed en route and enclosing a detailed drawing of the lost member. There was a brisk exchange of letters, the carriers denying all responsibility. Finally Mr. Pinfold, decently reluctant to involve the donor in a dispute about a gift, wrote to James Lance asking for corroboration. James Lance replied: there never had been any tap such as Mr. Pinfold described.

‘You haven’t always been altogether making sense lately,’ said Mrs. Pinfold when her husband showed her this letter, ‘and you’re a very odd colour. Either you’re drinking too much or doping too much, or both.’

‘I wonder if you’re right,’ said Mr. Pinfold. ‘Perhaps I ought to go slow after Christmas.’

The children’s holidays were a time when Mr. Pinfold felt a special need for unconsciousness at night and for stimulated geniality by day. Christmas was always the worst season. During that dread week he made copious use of wine and narcotics and his inflamed face shone like the florid squireens depicted in the cards that littered the house. Once catching sight of himself in the looking-glass, thus empurpled and wearing a paper crown, he took fright at what he saw.

‘I must get away,’ said Mr. Pinfold later to his wife. ‘I must go somewhere sunny and finish my book.’

‘I wish I could come too. There’s so much to be done getting Hill’s horrible fields back into shape. I’m rather worried about you, you know. You ought to have someone to look after you.’

‘I’ll be all right. I work better alone.’

The cold grew intense. Mr. Pinfold spent the day crouched over the library fire. To leave it for the icy passages made him shudder and stumble, half benumbed, while outside the hidden sun glared over a landscape that seemed all turned to metal; lead and iron and steel. Only in the evenings did Mr. Pinfold manage a semblance of jollity, joining his family in charades or Up Jenkins, playing the fool to the loud delight of the youngest and the tolerant amusement of the eldest of his children, until in degrees of age they went happily to their rooms and he was released into his own darkness and silence.

At length the holidays came to an end. Nuns and monks received their returning charges and Lychpole was left in peace save for rare intrusions from the nursery. And now just when Mr. Pinfold was gathering himself as it were for a strenuous effort at reformation, he was struck down by the most severe attack of his ‘aches’ which he had yet suffered. Every joint, but especially feet, ankles and knees, agonized him. Dr. Drake again advocated a warm climate and prescribed some pills which he said were ‘something new and pretty powerful’. They were large and drab, reminding Mr. Pinfold of the pellets of blotting-paper which used to be rolled at his private school. Mr. Pinfold added them to his bromide and chloral and Crême de Menthe, his wine and gin and brandy, and to a new sleeping-draught which his doctor, ignorant of the existence of his other bottle, also supplied.

And now his mind became much overcast. One great thought excluded all others, the need to escape. He, who even in this extremity eschewed the telephone, telegraphed to the travel-agency with whom he dealt: Kindly arrange immediate passage West Indies, East Indies, Africa, India, anywhere hot, luxury preferred, private bath, outside single cabin essential, and anxiously awaited the reply. When it came it comprised a large envelope full of decorative folders and a note saying they awaited his further instructions.

Mr. Pinfold became frantic. He knew one of the directors of the firm. He thought he had met others. It came to him in his daze quite erroneously that he had lately read somewhere that a lady of his acquaintance had joined the board. To all of them at their private addresses he despatched peremptory telegrams: Kindly investigate wanton inefficiency your office. Pinfold.

The director whom he really knew took action. There was little choice at that moment. Mr. Pinfold was lucky to secure a passage in the Caliban, a one-class ship sailing in three days for Ceylon.

During the time of waiting Mr. Pinfold’s frenzy subsided. He became instead intermittently comatose. When lucid he was in pain.

Mrs. Pinfold said, as she had often said before: ‘You’re doped, darling, up to the eyes.’

‘Yes. It’s those rheumatism pills. Drake said they were very strong.’

Mr. Pinfold, who was normally rather deft, now became clumsy. He dropped things. He found his buttons and laces intractable, his handwriting in the few letters which his journey necessitated, uncertain, his spelling, never strong, wildly barbaric.

In one of his clearer hours he said to Mrs. Pinfold: ‘I believe you are right. I shall give up the sleeping-draughts as soon as I get to sea. I always sleep better at sea. I shall cut down on drink too. As soon as I get rid of these damned aches, I shall start work. I can always work at sea. I shall have the book finished before I get home.’

These resolutions persisted; there was a sober, industrious time ahead of him in a few days’ time. He had to survive somehow until then. Everything would come right very soon.

Mrs. Pinfold shared these hopes. She was busy with her plans for the farm which the newly liberated territory made more elaborate. She could not get away. Nor did she think her presence was needed. Once her husband was safely on board, all would be well with him.

She helped him pack. Indeed he could do nothing except sit on a bedroom chair and give confused directions. He must take foolscap paper, he said, in large quantities; also ink, foreign ink was never satisfactory. And pens. He had once experienced great difficulty in New York in purchasing pen-nibs; he had in the end had recourse to a remote law-stationer’s. All foreigners, he was now convinced, used some kind of stylographic instrument. He must take pens and nibs. His clothes were a matter of indifference. You could always get a Chinaman, anywhere out of Europe, to make you a suit of clothes in an afternoon, Mr. Pinfold said.

That Sunday morning Mr. Pinfold did not go to Mass. He lay in bed until midday and, when he came down, hobbled to the drawing-room window and gazed across the bare, icy park thinking of the welcoming tropics. Then he said: ‘Oh God, here comes the Bruiser.’

‘Hide.’

‘No fire in the library.’

‘I’ll tell him you’re ill.’

‘No. I like the Bruiser. Besides, if you say I’m ill, he’ll set his damned Box to work on me.’

Throughout the short visit Mr. Pinfold exerted himself to be affable.

‘You aren’t looking at all well, Gilbert,’ the Bruiser said.

‘I’m all right really. A twinge of rheumatism. I’m sailing the day after tomorrow for Ceylon.’

‘That’s very sudden, isn’t it?’

‘The weather. Need a change.’

He sank into his chair and then, when the Bruiser left, got to his feet again with an enormous obvious effort.

‘Please don’t come out,’ said the Bruiser.

Mrs. Pinfold went with him to release his dog and when she returned found Mr. Pinfold enraged.

‘I know what you two have been talking about.’

‘Do you? I was hearing about the Fawdles’ row with the Parish Council about their right of way.’

‘You’ve been giving him my hair for his Box.’

‘Nonsense, Gilbert.’

‘I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was measuring my Life-Waves.’

Mrs. Pinfold looked at him sadly. ‘You really are in rather a bad way, aren’t you, darling?’

The Caliban was not a ship so large as to require a special train; carriages were reserved on the regular service from London. Mrs. Pinfold accompanied him there the day before his departure. He had to collect his tickets from the travel-agency, but when he arrived in London great lassitude came over him and he went straight to bed in his hotel, summoning a messenger from the agency to bring them to him. A young polite man came at once. He bore a small portfolio of documents, tickets for train and ship and for return by air, baggage forms, embarkation cards, carbon copies of letters of reservation and the like. Mr. Pinfold had difficulty in understanding. He had trouble with his cheque book. The young man looked at him with more than normal curiosity. Perhaps he was a reader of Mr. Pinfold’s works. It was more probable that he found something bizarre in the spectacle of Mr. Pinfold, lying there groaning and muttering, propped by pillows, purple in the face, with a bottle of champagne open beside him. Mr. Pinfold offered him a glass. He refused. When he had gone Mr. Pinfold said: ‘I didn’t at all like the look of that young man.’

‘Oh, he was all right,’ said Mrs. Pinfold.

‘There was something fishy about him,’ said Mr. Pinfold. ‘He stared at me as though he was measuring my Life-Waves.’

Then he fell into a doze.

Mrs. Pinfold lunched alone downstairs and rejoined her husband who said: ‘I must go and say goodbye to my mother. Order a car.’

‘Darling, you aren’t well enough.’

‘I always say goodbye to her before going abroad. I’ve told her we are coming.’

‘I’ll telephone and explain. Or shall I go out there alone?’

‘I’m going. It’s true I’m not well enough, but I’m going. Get the hall-porter to have a car here in half an hour.’

Mr. Pinfold’s widowed mother lived in a pretty little house at Kew. She was eighty-two years old, sharp of sight and hearing, but of recent years very slow of mind. In childhood Mr. Pinfold had loved her extravagantly. There remained now only a firm pietas. He no longer enjoyed her company nor wished to communicate. She had been left rather badly off by his father. Mr. Pinfold supplemented her income with payments under a deed of covenant so that she was now comfortably placed with a single, faithful old maid to look after her and all her favourite possessions, preserved from the larger house, set out round her. Young Mrs. Pinfold, who would talk happily of her children, was very much more agreeable company to the old woman than was her son, but Mr. Pinfold went to call dutifully several times a year and, as he said, always before an absence of any length.

A funereal limousine bore them to Kew. Mr. Pinfold sat huddled in rugs. He hobbled on two sticks, one a blackthorn, the other a malacca cane, through the little gate up the garden path. An hour later he was out again, subsiding with groans into the back of the car. The visit had not been a success.

‘It wasn’t a success, was it?’ said Mr. Pinfold.

‘We ought to have stayed to tea.’

‘She knows I never have tea.’

‘But I do, and Mrs. Yercombe had it all prepared. I saw it on a trolley—cakes and sandwiches and a muffin-dish.’

‘The truth is my mother doesn’t like to see anyone younger than herself iller than herself—except children of course.’

‘You were beastly snubbing about the children.’

‘Yes. I know. Damn. Damn. Damn. I’ll write to her from the ship. I’ll send her a cable. Why does everyone except me find it so easy to be nice?’

When he reached the hotel he returned to bed and ordered another bottle of champagne. He dozed again. Mrs. Pinfold sat quietly reading a paper-covered detective story. He awoke and ordered a rather elaborate dinner, but by the time it came his appetite was gone. Mrs. Pinfold ate well, but sadly. When the table was wheeled out, Mr. Pinfold hobbled to the bathroom and took his blue-grey pills. Three a day was the number prescribed. He had a dozen left. He took a big dose of his sleeping-draught; the bottle was half full.

‘I’m taking too much,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘I’ll finish what I’ve got and never order any more.’ He looked at himself in the glass. He looked at the backs of his hands which were again mottled with large crimson patches. ‘I’m sure it’s not really good for me,’ he said and felt his way to bed, tumbled in and fell heavily asleep.

His train was at ten next day. The funereal limousine was ordered. Mr. Pinfold dressed laboriously and, without shaving, went to the station. Mrs. Pinfold came with him. He needed help to find a porter and to find his seat. He dropped his ticket and his sticks on the platform.

‘I don’t believe you ought to be going alone,’ said Mrs. Pinfold. ‘Wait for another ship and I’ll come too.’

‘No, no. I shall be all right.’

But some hours later when he reached the docks Mr. Pinfold did not feel so hopeful. He had slept most of the way, now and then waking to light a cigar and let it fall from his fingers after a few puffs. His aches seemed sharper than ever as he climbed out of the carriage. Snow was falling. The distance from the train to the ship seemed enormous. The other passengers stepped out briskly. Mr. Pinfold moved slowly. On the quay a telegraph boy was taking messages. Mrs. Pinfold would be back at Lychpole by now. Mr. Pinfold with great difficulty wrote: Safely embarked. All love. Then he moved to the gangway and painfully climbed aboard.

A coloured steward led him to his cabin. He gazed round it unseeing, sitting on a bunk. There was something he ought to do; telegraph his mother. On the cabin table was some writing paper bearing the ship’s name and the flag of the line at its head. Mr. Pinfold tried to compose and inscribe a message. The task proved to be one of insuperable difficulty. He threw the spoilt paper into the basket and sat on his bed, still in his hat and overcoat with his sticks beside him. Presently his two suitcases arrived. He gazed at them for some time, then began to unpack. That too proved difficult. He rang his bell and the coloured steward re-appeared bowing and smiling.

‘I’m not very well. I wonder if you could unpack for me?’

‘Dinner seven-thirty o’clock, sir.’

‘I said, could you unpack for me?’

‘No, sir, bar not open in port, sir.’

The man smiled and bowed and left Mr. Pinfold.

Mr. Pinfold sat there, in his hat and coat, holding his cudgel and his cane. Presently an English steward appeared with the passenger list, some forms to fill, and the message: ‘The Captain’s compliments, sir, and he would like to have the honour of your company at his table in the dining-saloon.’

‘Now?’

‘No, sir. Dinner is at 7.30. I don’t expect the Captain will be dining in the saloon tonight.’

‘I don’t think I shall either,’ said Mr. Pinfold. ‘Thank the Captain. Very civil of him. Another night. Someone said something about the bar not being open. Can’t you get me some brandy?’

‘Oh yes, sir. I think so, sir. Any particular brand?’

‘Brandy,’ said Mr. Pinfold. ‘Large one.’

The chief steward brought it with his own hands.

‘Good night,’ said Mr. Pinfold.

He found on the top of his case the things he needed for the night. Among them his pills and his bottle. The brandy impelled him to action. He must telegraph to his mother. He groped his way out and along the corridor to the purser’s office. A clerk was on duty, very busy with his papers behind a grill.

‘I want to send a telegram.’

‘Yes, sir. There’s a boy at the head of the gangway.’

‘I’m not feeling very well. I wonder if you could be very kind and write it for me?’

The purser looked at him hard, observed his unshaven chin, smelled brandy, and drew on his long experience of travellers.

‘Sorry about that, sir. Pleased to be any help.’

Mr. Pinfold dictated, ‘Everyone in ship most helpful. Love. Gilbert,’ fumbled with a handful of silver, then crept back to his cabin. There he took his large grey pills and a swig of his sleeping-draught. Then, prayerless, he got himself to bed.