A Difficult Young Man Page 3

  Although Steven was not as distressed as Laura at Dominic’s surprise being spoiled, he agreed that Sarah was a universal grey blight, and always had been. At times efforts had been made to remove her, but at first there had been nowhere else for her to go, and now Alice said: ‘I’m used to her.’ Steven cautioned us that we were not to give any hint to Dominic that we knew of his notices before they burst on us in their splendour, in painted festoons of daisies and forget-me-nots, as we drove in at the gate and drew up at the front door.

  The result of this was that Brian and I over-acted our surprise, exclaiming in wonder at their beauty. But Dominic himself was so generous in his affections and warmth of heart, when they functioned, that his spiritual perception did not reveal to him the falsity of our surprise. Or perhaps he only saw our desire to please and our good feeling, which made us affect it.

  ‘Gosh! It must have taken you ages to do!’ we cried, standing back, and with our cupped hands excluding from our view everything but the painted cardboard, as we had seen Steven do when appraising his water-colours.

  Laura said: ‘They’re lovely, darling,’ but there was bitterness in her voice, not only because she had been deprived of the spontaneous amusement and delight it would have given her to come unexpectedly on these notices, but because all the pleasure and affection of her homecoming and reunion with Dominic, for whom she had stronger feelings than for Brian and me, of which we were not at all jealous, had been hindered in their expression with a gratuitous element of humbug. Sarah had just stopped something fusing. However, this evaporated when we came into the house, and Brian and I gave him the presents we had brought him because he was ill, a spoon with a map of Tasmania on the handle, and a hideous souvenir made of greenstone. We shouted at him all we had done:

  ‘Dominic, we climbed right to the top of Mount Wellington.’

  ‘And of Mount Nelson.’

  ‘And we went down the Huon in a coach.’

  ‘And came back in a little steamer.’

  ‘And we had masses and masses of strawberries.’

  ‘And Guy was sick.’

  ‘I wasn’t. It was the train made me sick.’

  When, in this fashion, we had described our entire holiday, we ran out to see the servants and the ponies, and to give the latter lumps of sugar. At times like this Westhill seemed to us the best place on earth. We might have our dreams of grandeur and appreciate the fleshpots of Beaumanoir, but we would not have changed one detail of our shabby old house. I was at this time only about seven or eight years old, and had not yet a pony of my own. When we went for our frequent excursions and picnics, I drove with my parents while Dominic and Brian rode beside the tea-cart or the drag, or whatever vehicle we might be using, but Dominic was now growing rather tall for his Shetland.

  There were certain people who appeared to have a definite effect on the course of Dominic’s life. They might do something trivial which one would have thought concerned only themselves, and yet it had a repercussion upon Dominic. Baba was one of these, Sarah another, and the chief of them was Helena Craig, Aunt Maysie’s daughter, to whom we shall come presently. Sarah’s casual and only half-consciously malicious revelation at Dandenong, had predisposed all of us, but particularly Laura, to feelings of strong loyalty and affection towards Dominic when we met him, and as a result of this, for once he was satisfied with our demonstration. Usually he demanded so much more evidence of affection than he received. When Dominic was satisfied and happy, it was as if the spanner were removed from the works of our domestic life. This, combined with their natural pleasure at being home again, put my parents into an expansive and generous mood. That night they decided to give Dominic, who had been so good about his illness and missing his holiday, a new horse instead of the visit to the pantomime which was to have been his consolation prize. They told Alice about this, and when she heard of his painting the notices, and as she loved more than anything that the impulses of the heart should blossom into external decoration, she said that she would give him his new horse, which meant it would be a very much better one than Steven could afford.

  In this way Tamburlaine came into our lives.

  As I proceed to unfold, I hope, the character of Dominic before the reader, I may provoke the criticism: ‘But that is not consistent with what he has just done.’ The difficulty about Dominic’s character was that it did not appear consistent, and yet, when we have viewed it as a whole I hope to have shown that it was so. In the meantime I can only proceed like the painter Sisley, who when he wished to convey an effect of green, put a dot of blue on his canvas, and then a dot of yellow beside it. From a little way off the green thus appears more lively and luminous. So I must put these dots of contradictory colour next to each other in the hope that Dominic may ultimately appear alive. And this is more or less my method throughout the whole of this book—to give what information I can, and let the reader form his own conception of the character.

  There are certain incidents in his boyhood of which I cannot remember the exact dates, which do throw some light on his nature, and one I shall insert here to form, as it were, a corrective blue to the happy yellow of the day I have just recorded. It is illustrative of his emotional vulnerability. Although at times he appeared entirely self-centred, often, as was said of a very different character, I think a high-minded Cambridge don, ‘he exposed himself to the full force of other people’s wrongs.’

  In the country in the Australian summer, the flies are a plague, and those who have not fine wire-netting over their windows cannot live in comfort. Even so an occasional fly will find its way down the chimney and buzz maddeningly against the windows. To deal with these we had a kind of rubber squirt, filled with insecticide powder. On one of those spring days when the sudden heat out of doors is like the blast from an oven, I was alone with Dominic in the drawing-room. A fly came down the chimney and Dominic puffed it with the mustard-coloured insecticide. It buzzed furiously against the window, then shot down the length of the room to bang itself against another, where it buzzed more spasmodically and finally lay on the sill subject to one or two last feeble tremors. It took about three minutes to die, and for that time Dominic stood perfectly still watching it.

  At that time I accepted as a matter of course the death of any insect or animal which was troublesome to the human race, or which was good to eat, and could even see a pig killed without qualms. So the buzz of a dying fly was no more disturbing to me than the plop of a falling chestnut. But, again with the spiritual perception of children, or the instinctive animal knowledge they have of each other’s moods, I knew that Dominic was going through some horrible experience, that inside himself he was dying with the fly he had killed. His whole expression, not only his sombre face but the dejected hang of his body, told me that he was absorbing for the first time the fact of death. I could not bear the proximity of his wretchedness, and I wished he would move, but I was too afraid of him to say so, and at that moment to interrupt his mood. It is possible that having once gone through this exposure of himself to the idea of death, he felt it to be a form of cowardice, and that to conquer it he gave himself up to the idea of violence. Incidentally, when I state that I was afraid of Dominic, I do not mean that he would injure me physically. I never remember his doing this. I was afraid of the intensity of his feelings.

  Here too may be mentioned Dominic’s pride. Some years ago in The Times appeared this advertisement: ‘Enthusiastic young man wishes to meet another enthusiastic young man to share enthusiasm.’ The subject for enthusiasm was not mentioned. Dominic’s pride was of this nature. One did not know what he was proud about. He was not vain of his looks or his capacities. He was just proud. I believe that the Logical Positivists, if they are still in fashion, say that moral qualities can have no existence until they are expressed in action. They could in Dominic. He was full of moral qualities unrelated to action. But when Alice gave him Tamburlaine his pride ha
d visible means of support. Tamburlaine was a beautiful bay pony, a little high for Dominic at that age, but as he was growing quickly, it was thought better he should have a mount he would still be able to ride a few years ahead. He called him Tamburlaine as when he was laid up he had been reading a book about the great Khan of the Mongols. This pony was given to Dominic a few weeks before his birthday, for which Alice, in an extension of generosity, gave him a party at Beaumanoir. It fell on a Sunday, so it was confused to some extent with the usual Sunday luncheon which was crowded with cousins and aunts. Cousin Sarah was very annoyed at this ‘breaking of the sabbath’ especially as in the afternoon there would be the ‘Beaumanoir Sunday Sports’ fun and games arranged by Austin, ostensibly for the amusement of his grandchildren, but in reality for his own. He wrote posters and stuck them on the front door and the terrace, with a list of events, which today featured ‘The spectacular and daring race on horseback into the sea.’ We knew this was going to happen and those who possessed ponies, had brought them. Dominic had ridden Tamburlaine down the day before, and it was assumed by all of us that he would win the race, even though heavily handicapped. There was a great deal of talk about the new pony, and Brian who was occasionally possessed by powers of lyrical description, described him to our cousins as we sat at our table in the oriel window. Helena Craig was there with her two brothers, also the Flugels, and some Dells, who, for propriety’s sake were described as our third cousins when in reality they were our first. We thought them rather oafish. The spirit descended on Brian as he described the virtues of Tamburlaine.

  ‘He’s fourteen hands high,’ he said, stretching his arm up above his head, and continuing with much gesticulation. ‘His coat is short and shiny like satin. He has two round eyes which he uses to look surprised when you go to catch him in the paddock. He looks back at you over his shoulder, and if you don’t want to catch him, he just neighs to say good morning. When he’s in the paddock he walks round it as if it belongs to him, and all the other ponies and horses obey him. When we have tea in the garden, he puts his head over the fence to be with us, and to have some sugar lumps.’ Brian became so absorbed in his fantasy that the other children stopped eating to watch him. Their eyes fixed on him, were as bright, intent and amused as his own. The idea of Tamburlaine possessed them all. The quality of their lives had become heightened because of the existence of this wonderful horse. ‘He has hooves that are black and polished,’ Brian went on, holding his hands horizontally. ‘He has shoes that are new like silver. He has a very soft nose and whiskers that tickle when you touch them. He has short white teeth because he is young, but he is a kind horse and is careful not to bite you when you give him an apple. And when he gallops! The speed! Phew!’ Brian put his hand on his heart and fell off his chair, pretending to faint with amazement at the glorious merits of Tamburlaine.

  Owen Dell, who was named after his putative grandfather but who was in reality Austin’s grandson, as I have explained elsewhere, was the only one of us who did not enter into the spirit of Brian’s performance. He was embarrassed by any flight of imagination, and with a slight sneer he went on eating his dinner. Helena, on the other hand, with sparkling eyes lifted her glass of ‘lemonade,’ a concoction made of chemicals by Cousin Sarah in a country where fresh lemons were twopence a dozen, and commanded:

  ‘Tamburlaine! Drink to Tamburlaine, the Great Khan of the Mongols.’

  We lifted our glasses and cried: ‘Tamburlaine!’ except Owen, who jeered, ‘The great Can’t of the Mongrels.’

  The attention of the grown-ups’ table had been drawn to us, first by Brian’s falling off his chair, and then by our cries of ‘Tamburlaine.’ They were all looking round to tell us to be less noisy, and so had an unmistakable view of Dominic flinging the contents of his glass in Owen’s face.

  There was an uproar. All the latent hostility to Dominic flared up. There was a touch of this in everyone, except Helena, who had that splendid courage which is without enmity because it fears no one, and of course Laura, who though she was not hostile, always had a lightly slumbering anxiety as to what he would do next. This hostility was among the adults. At our table we were horrified at his recklessness in throwing lemonade about in Grannie’s sacred dining-room, but we thought Owen had asked for it. He was wiping his clothes with his table napkin and bleating: ‘He’s spoiled my best suit.’

  Steven took Dominic, panting with emotion, out of the room, and Uncle Bertie said:

  ‘I hope he gives him a good drubbing.’

  ‘You can’t beat a flame without putting it out,’ said Aunt Diana, who talked what Uncle Arthur called ‘high-souled rot.’

  Apparently Dominic was not beaten, as he came back in a minute or two, having probably been told by Steven, who was always lucid, that he had no objection to his sousing the Dell boys, but that it was outrageous to do it in his grandparents’ dining-room, especially when they were present.

  As Dominic returning passed Austin’s chair, the latter gave him a curious suspicious and malevolent glance. He was always on tenterhooks that something might reveal his relationship to the Dells, and now thought that perhaps an instinctive hostility between his legitimate and illegitimate grandsons might do so, and that a revelation might come without the medium of words.

  For the rest of the meal we spoke delicately at our table, not from consideration of our elders, who would not have minded reasonable noise, as they were making sufficient themselves with their chaff and their wit, but of Dominic, who was in a Jovian thundercloud, as it appeared to us, though in reality he was seeing himself as the insulted and injured. He thought he had behaved perfectly. Owen had spoken offensively of his horse, which had already become a noble symbol to him. He had followed what he believed to be the correct procedure on such an occasion and thrown his drink in his cousin’s face, and then on his own birthday he had been led ignominiously from the room. That was what outraged him. He always imagined that his elders understood perfectly the motives of his behaviour, and then punished him. He did not know that their minds moved almost in different centuries.

  After luncheon the grown-ups went to rest and we amused ourselves in various ways until the sports began at three o’clock. Dominic disappeared. Passing Sarah’s room, that strange vinegar-scented spider’s web, full of black leather books and lozenges, he had been pounced on and dragged in to acknowledge his wickedness. Sarah first of all worked him up into a state of contrition by impressing on him the sorrow he had caused Grannie by his behaviour at luncheon, and then, pursuing her subterranean warfare against the pleasures of the family, asked him if he were going to offend God by taking part in the Sunday sports.

  ‘But everyone goes to the sports,’ said Dominic, ‘even Grannie does.’

  ‘She goes to give pleasure to others,’ said Sarah.

  ‘D’you mean she does what is wrong to give pleasure?’

  ‘She doesn’t know it’s wrong,’ said Sarah, appearing to squint, as she did when faced with reason.

  ‘Then I must go and tell her,’ said Dominic, standing up.

  ‘No. That would be impertinent.’ Sarah’s warfare was conducted partly from motives of envy of pleasures she could not enjoy, partly from a real conviction that they were wrong, but chiefly from the excitement she obtained from the risk that her sabotage might be discovered. Alice might accept perpetual pin-pricks as due to Sarah’s stupidity, but open opposition would rouse her to action which would be immediate, just and devastating to Sarah, who now said: ‘The only thing you can do is to stay away. Take your prayer-book and learn the Collect.’ One of the injuries which Sarah inflicted on us was to give us a lifelong distaste for the beautiful collects for the day which she understood little better than ourselves, by forcing us to learn them while they were still meaningless to us.

  At times Dominic’s brain functioned with perfect logic, but mostly his actions were governed by dark waves of feeling, which lat
er made him attractive to women. He was full of Lawrence’s dark god, or whatever the jargon is. Now after the disturbance of his emotions at luncheon, Sarah had stirred up his never very dormant sense of guilt. He felt himself confused and different from the rest of us. When she told him he should not go to the sports, he was so depressed that he did not quite realize how great was the sacrifice she was asking. He went up into the turret and learned the collect, after which he read the bits about the procreation of children in the marriage service.

  By this time our elders had slept off their luncheon and drifted out into the paddock, where they stood about chatting in the sunlight, with faint expectant smiles, which they were ready to bestow on the efforts and antics of their children. The women had lace parasols and Alice had a toque surrounded with purple pansies, which were thought very daring. Austin wore a solar topee and an enormous card in his buttonhole with ‘steward’ written on it. Before the great race into the sea, there were various minor events, sprinting, hurdle and obstacle races. Now and then someone said: ‘Where’s Dominic?’ but they did not worry about his absence until the time came for the horse race.

  Those competing in this had to change into neck-to-knee bathing dresses, in which they looked pathetic and skimpy. They had numbers on their backs, which stayed there all the year, so that when they were bathing their governesses could see which child was getting out of its depths. They mounted bareback on their ponies and then Austin growled: ‘Where’s Dominic?’

  All the children on their ponies called and shouted: ‘Dominic! Dominic!’

  Sarah must have heard them in her vinegar-scented room, and felt a mild sensation of both power and fright. I was thought too young for the race and anyhow my pony was at Westhill, so I was sent to look for him.

  At last I found him in the turret, with a lot of dust on his Sunday suit, as these places were never cleaned. As soon as I opened the little door I felt the waves of his mood oppress me, and I could not speak with any confidence. My timidity made him more determined and he told me he was not coming, and that it was wrong to have sports on Sunday.