A Difficult Young Man Read online

  Also Beaumanoir was the Mecca of our whole huge clan, who thronged the place not only because of the good food and the simmering atmosphere of amusement and pleasure, but because of their family gregariousness and attraction to their own kind, even if it led to frequent quarrels. Dominic was the eldest and certainly in his own eyes, the most important of the cousins. He soon acquired an added importance to that of primogeniture, but it was only what was called by the politicians of the 1930’s ‘nuisance value.’

  This sounds as if he was an unsympathetic character, but many people found him quite the opposite. Only a few disliked him, and when they did they repudiated and detested him absolutely. Women found him extremely attractive, especially nice women. The other sort, though they may have at first been excited by his sombre handsome face, soon found something in his nature which bothered them, a requirement which made them feel inadequate and therefore angry.

  Of these was Aunt Baba, who appeared on the scene shortly after our grandparents, having returned from Europe, had settled at Beaumanoir. Uncle George had heard from Dolly Potts, the object of his lifelong devotion, that she could never leave her father in Ireland, and that it was useless for him to hope that she would change her mind. He may not have wanted to remain a bachelor, but it is hard to see why he married Baba. Perhaps he was too dispirited to take the initiative, and she did it for him.

  There was a good deal of talk about Baba before she arrived in our circle. Our elders were very careless of what they said before us, as we over-ran Beaumanoir like mice. Occasionally they might say, ‘Attention aux enfants’ and speak a few sentences in French, but as, except for Alice, their knowledge of this language was limited, they soon gave it up, and we all knew that Uncle George was paying attention to a Miss Barbara Stanger of Moonee Ponds, which, like so many things, appeared to strike them as slightly comic. The name Moonee Ponds amused them. It was on the wrong side of Melbourne, as there, unlike most large cities, the better end was not in the west. They thought it ridiculous of her to call herself Baba, and made jokes about black sheep, and mutton dressed as lamb.

  At last she was invited to Sunday luncheon, but, it was said, they would have to leave early, as George was taking her to the Zoo, and Austin, who was then still alive, growled: ‘I hope they’ll accept her.’

  Dominic was said by someone to have unusual ‘spiritual perception,’ but every child has this, and animals have it very strongly on their level. The more articulate we become the quicker we lose it and as Dominic was never very articulate he retained it longer than most people. On the day that Baba came to luncheon he focused his spiritual perception on her. He already had the most chivalrous notions about women and love, and he was dumbly indignant at the way his relatives spoke about an object of such delicate reverence as a bride-to-be, before they had even seen her. He also had compassionate feelings for anyone who was outside the herd, feeling himself to be so different from the bright, kind and frivolous group in which he moved.

  From the obscurities of Moonee Ponds the Langtons must have appeared dazzling, and Baba imagined that she was seizing the opportunity to marry into one of the grandest and richest families within her horizons. It is said to be an ordeal for any girl to meet her future in-laws for the first time, and Baba, for all her protective armour, must have been nervous on this visit to Beaumanoir.

  One of our English cousins was left a lunatic asylum, patronized exclusively by the aristocracy. He gave a garden party to which he invited a snobbish aunt who was delighted to meet so many peers, but when she found they were all mad she was very angry. Baba must have had something of the same feelings on this occasion. She had imagined that it would be very formal, and that the correct social usages would be followed as a religious duty, and she had made many inquiries beforehand about wine glasses and forks. When she arrived the place was swarming with grandchildren. Those who had spoken of her with facetious contempt welcomed her with the greatest display of friendliness. This increased Dominic’s indignation, though it sprang from the same motive as their former conduct, the wish to create a cheerful atmosphere.

  Just before she arrived Austin had said that it was hot and he wanted to go to Tasmania. At once there were cries of, ‘Oh, I want to go too.’ ‘Papa, please take me?’ ‘May we come, grannie?’ As Austin growled: ‘I hate these confounded extensions,’ George and Baba came into the room, and she felt, though she was not certain, that his inexplicable remark applied to herself. However, with an amiability as irrational as the malice they had shown before they met her, they said to Baba:

  ‘Why don’t you come too? It’s lovely in Tasmania now. Mama will chaperone you.’

  Baba was not gratified by this invitation. It was not in conformity with her ideas of correct usage to say to someone you have just met: ‘How d’you do. Will you come to Tasmania?’ She had a suspicion that they might be mocking her. Again, when a bell rang in one of the little green cupolas and a parlourmaid tried to announce luncheon above the din, she was shocked by the lack of solemnity which she felt should attend the meals of ‘important’ people, especially as our great-grandmother, Lady Langton, was present. She sat upright and shrivelled like a mummy with just a little life left in its eyes, and Austin yelled at her occasionally: ‘We’re going to Tasmania, mama.’ When we straggled across to the dining-room, she was taken away somewhere else to a mysterious ritual, like the feeding of a goddess.

  In the dining-room the children were seated, except Dominic, at a separate table in the oriel window. Aunt Diana stood disconsolately in the doorway impeding the servants who were bringing in the food. She lived in a cottage nearby, to which she was returning to Sunday dinner with her husband and children.

  ‘Oh, I would like to go to Tasmania,’ she said. ‘I have the hottest house of anyone, and I’m the only one who can’t get away.’

  ‘If you’re staying to luncheon,’ said Alice, ‘do come in and sit down and they’ll lay a place for you. But if you’re not, please don’t stand in the doorway.’

  ‘I must get back to Wolfie and the children,’ said Diana, but she still stood in the doorway, and stopped the servants bringing in the vegetables. When she noticed this, she stood aside with a martyred air, as if all domestic activity was tiresome. Alice then told her that she might come to Tasmania if she wished, and she said: ‘Oh, thank you, mama,’ but still with a slight note of injury, as she was never unduly grateful. With a regretful glance at the long sparkling table, where she knew that the food and the fun would be so much better than in her little wooden cottage, she shut the door and went home. Yet even Diana, so terribly poor, had a servant to cook her meals, and a woman to clean on three days a week. It is hard to think what poverty meant in those days, except, perhaps, the poverty of her charwoman.

  Dominic, the only one of us allowed at the grown-up table, was seated opposite Baba. He turned on her the compassionate scrutiny of his deep brown eyes, perceiving her spiritual nature throughout the entire length of the meal, which maddened her. Also he could only perceive that part of it which resembled his own, a mere fragment. He saw that she was ill at ease, and thought it was due to the vivacity of the conversation, which so often bewildered himself. When the family had had a little champagne, they flung out anything that came into their heads, and as their minds were very quick but often shallow, a great deal that they said was nonsense, though it might contain a percentage of sparks of genuine wit higher than would be found in the conversation of more serious people. He also knew that Baba’s origins were rather humbler than our own, and as he had the illusion that the lower one went in the social scale, the greater the simplicity and kindness of heart one found, he thought that in Baba, devoid of wit and humble, he might find a soulmate.

  The virtue which Baba most detested was pity, and it was an intolerable thought that anyone should ever feel sorry for her. To have Dominic’s steady gaze fixed on her with Christian understanding of her afflictions at
the very time when she was trying, if not to shine, at least to keep her end up in this new milieu, made her hate him. But her dislike was not only due to this and to an incident which happened about an hour later. It was instinctive and arose from those things in which educated people are not supposed to believe nowadays, astrological influences or the colours of their auras. Oddly enough Dominic, usually so passionate in his feelings, did not return her dislike, though unwittingly he affected her life, but not as much as she affected his. He felt in her the resistance he could not find in his relatives, who met his provocations only with kindness and reason, and he wanted to win her approval.

  About half an hour after luncheon the hansom came to take George and Baba to the Zoo. Most of the party with their gregarious amiability went out to see them off. Dominic knew that the moment they had driven away Baba’s character would be subjected to a disintegrating analysis, and he imagined that she would be feeling as he would in the same circumstances, the insulted and injured, rejected by a flippant and heartless world. He always wanted to compensate those he thought unfortunate. He also had a sense of occasion, and when a bride-to-be came for the first time to the house, he thought it should be marked by some gesture, and where others failed he never hesitated to take responsibility on himself. Nearby was a bed of madonna lilies and he picked some of these and handed them to Baba, just as she was about to step into the cab. Everyone stood still with surprise, and the only sound was a giggle of appreciation from Aunt Mildy, who loved anything that suggested courtship and marriage. Baba was furious and again thought that Dominic was making fun of her. George said:

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t take all this vegetation to the Zoo with us, but it’s a kind thought. Perhaps you’d like them, Laura?’

  He took the lilies from Baba and handed them to my mother, who, as the hansom drove away said:

  ‘You shouldn’t have picked Grannie’s lilies without asking, darling. Besides, Miss Stanger didn’t really want them.’

  They all stared at Dominic for a moment in amused scrutiny, then someone said:

  ‘Well, what d’you think of her?’

  The bright babel of criticism broke out, and Dominic drifted away to brood on the fact that whenever he tried to do a kindness it landed him in some degree of trouble, whereas if Brian or myself made a graceful gesture, everyone uttered little cries of appreciation and delight.

  CHAPTER II

  AS THE lilies were out when Baba first met the family, it must have been near Christmas, when these flowers bloom in Australia. Shortly afterwards we were up at Westhill, preparing to leave for the Tasmanian holiday. During the long years I lived in England I used at intervals to dream of a place where the air had a limpid clearness and the landscape a soft brilliance of colour, such as I thought could only exist in some heavenly region of the imagination. The voices in this clear air were like bells at morning pealing. When I returned to Westhill I found that I had only been dreaming of the local countryside. I do not know if Grieg’s ‘Morning’ from the Peer Gynt suite is good music, but it does recall for me the mornings in that place. The stillness, the marvellous liquid notes of the magpies, the distant orchestration of noises at the farm down the hill, where the clang of a milk pail marked the close of a phrase. We liked so much being at Westhill that it is surprising we were eager to go to Tasmania, but we had the family disease of always wanting to be somewhere else.

  On one of these perfect mornings, a few days before we were due to leave, a telegram in connection with our departure had to be sent to Alice, and Dominic was told to dispatch it from Narre Warren, and I said I would go with him. Our ponies were out in the paddock, and it would have meant delay to catch them, so we set out on bicycles, which we brought home for the holidays, but did not normally use in the country. Part of the road down to Narre Warren from Westhill is very steep, and was and still is deeply rutted. The brakes on Dominic’s bicycle were out of order, but, he relied on the pressure of his foot against the front tyre to stop himself. When we came to the very steep part of the road, the jolting made it impossible to keep up the pressure, his bicycle shot ahead, caught in a rut, and flung him over the handlebars against a young gum tree by the road side. When I came up to him he was lying there perfectly still, with blood coming from his forehead, and I thought he was dead.

  I did not behave very sensibly. The golden morning became black with despair for me. Bobby, our eldest brother, had been killed from his pony only a few years earlier, and I thought that when my mother heard about Dominic she would go mad. Behind the smiling morning I felt that a treacherous malefic force was directed against us, and for a minute, instead of going for help, I stood there, wishing to die myself. I think it is possible that the emotions I had for that minute while I stood by Dominic, believing him to be dead, caused the ‘fixation,’ if that is the word, the concern I felt for Dominic all my life, the inability to escape from the thought of the processes to which life subjected him. Not long ago, driving near Westhill, I saw two magpies on the road. One had been wounded by a motor-car, the other was standing beside its mate, unwilling to leave it, unable to help it. At the sight I felt a sudden dreadful depression, which I think must have been an echo of this morning, so long past.

  When I recovered from this trance of terror, I took his hands, which fell limp when I let them go. Then I rode on, and rushed into the cottage of the Schmidts, a family which supplied us with domestics, screaming ‘Dominic’s dead! Dominic’s dead!’ which was, of course, untrue.

  He was sitting up, dazedly mopping his forehead, when we returned to the scene of the accident. The Schmidts lifted him into a cart and took him back to their cottage, where they put him to bed. Old Mrs Schmidt, who had been Alice’s maid, and was a great friend of our family’s, then drove me back to Westhill to break the news to Laura.

  It turned out that Dominic had broken a bone in his ankle and could not walk. He also had slight concussion, and was unfit to come to Tasmania. Our parents decided that no useful purpose would be served by the rest of us forfeiting our holiday, and he was promised a compensating treat when we returned, so in a few days we set out leaving him at Westhill in charge of Cousin Sarah. When he was told that we were going without him he said ‘Of course’ but the tears filled his eyes. It might only have been from the pain in his head and in his ankle, but I think it was that he could not bear any further exclusion from his fellows, beyond that which he already knew arose from his nature.

  Cousin Sarah was an historical survival, one of those penniless unmarried gentlewomen who were a feature of country house life in the seventeenth century. She was housekeeper at Beaumanoir, and played chess with Alice in the evenings. She had a little dark vinegar-scented room at the head of the main staircase into which she would snatch an unwary child for largely incomprehensible religious instruction. Dominic was the most allergic to this, as he respected Cousin Sarah for her complete absence of conscious levity. He came out from sessions with her, feeling that the devil possessed a large part of him, and that only unremitting efforts to please God, Who faintly disliked him, could save him from eternal torment, which may have been true. It was she who told him of his descent from the duque de Teba, pointed out his physical resemblance to that monster, and implied that he was capable of committing similar crimes, if he neglected religion. This again may have been true, but it was an unwise thing to tell a boy as moody as Dominic. Possibly from association of ideas, as the duke had performed his villainies in a crypt, he went to hide himself in the wine cellar, where in the darkness he broke some bottles of port, and so got into trouble, as often seemed to happen when Sarah had been trying to lead him into paths of virtue. When she told Brian and myself that we had an ancestor who had strangled altar boys we only thought it terribly funny, like a duke in a butt of Malmsey wine, or Blubeard’s wives in the cupboard.

  My mother imagined that it would be dull for Dominic to have to spend three weeks with Sar
ah, but he seemed quite pleased to have her at Westhill. Her mental development had been arrested at about his present age, and so he could have serious discussions with her at his own level, but with the illusion that he was conversing with an adult mind.

  The holiday in Tasmania was very pleasant, but had little effect on the course of this story. When we returned we went straight on by train to Dandenong, where Tom Schmidt met us with the drag. Sarah had come with him, as she was returning to her duties at Beaumanoir now that Alice was back. Laura’s first question to Sarah was:

  ‘How is Dominic?’

  ‘He’s getting on well,’ said Sarah, and putting on the smirk she assumed when she mentioned any childish activity, she went on: ‘He’s been sitting up on the sofa painting two large cards with “Welcome Home” on them. They’re to be a surprise. There’s one on the front door and one at the gate. It’s kept him occupied.’

  My mother’s eyes blazed as they could on the rare occasions when she was angry. She turned away without a word and climbed into the drag. When Sarah disappeared into the station she exclaimed: ‘The fool!’ For the nine miles drive up to Westhill she was very upset. At intervals she exclaimed: ‘What a fool Sarah is! It’s just like her.’