The Promise Ese (21)
Hector began to roam, thoughtfully. All his fantastic ideas, of Jack surfacing with stories of pearly treasures beneath the sea and the brothers dredging it together and of a prospectus, lay shattered. He had wondered if Smith's overtures hadn’t been a circuitous way of Jacks getting in touch. "Yes, yes," continued Jack, "And he may be a blackmailer or...” He was thinking assassin but unless Hector had been surreptitiously exchanging landmark- naming for political or sexual gaming, what motive? I don't want to be here, the phrase pounded in time to the roaming, I don't want to be here, I don't want to be here. Jack could see him shutting down. Perhaps he was deeply fraught and not bored. "Mustn't jump to conclusions, Hec old thing, particularly as Smith's raison'd'etre is still mysterious. Go to Battersea and clear it up." Leathwaite road adjoined Clapham Common. An accommodating acreage of shrubbery for corpse disposal. Jack had once categorized Hector's circumambulations of vast rooms into the ruminant plod, the drag, the suicide charge, the busy amble and the man-of -the- world billiard-ball swagger. A correlation of space with length of stride was all too obvious in the claustrophobic confines of the shops little yard. The penguins’ spree. "Naturally I will go there," Hector said, idly crushing his cigarette stub into a brick-cleft. " Now you have assured me of your non-involvement I feel our families are saved from further scandals...of this flavour." "Oh so it's not a question of you seeking my advice?" Jack felt illuminated and free. "In that case I can say how I think your years on the ice have taken their toll. Penguins waddle, true?" "On land. In the water they glide with as much vigour and grace as the albatross. Then they can also leap from the water onto the floe seemingly without effort. I can't think of another animal to compare them with in the leaping department, Deer, I suppose. Are you interested in the creatures of the polar regions? If so then you should see our movie, grand footage of seals and penguin colonies even of the killers. Some of the wildlife stuff was shot later to pad out the dramatic sequences of everyday life and the ships demise. But it gives you the sensation of standing mug to mug with a sea elephant." "I was merely going to remark upon your ungainly gait." Hector laughed, "Some of the penguin species are only this high," he put a hand to his knee, "so unless I am an emperor, why not make seal an analogy. An almost exclusive intake of seal fat will mould you into a passable replica of one." So saying he nudged aside a wicker hive then displayed himself like a basking seal upon the oil-smeared flagstones. A stillness quivered through him as if the pose was eternal rest. He stared at the square of naked sky above. "At the frozen tips of the earth, all animal life knows the importance of waiting. It waits for the return of day, for spring's succulent green shoots, for its mate to call or for its chick to fledge." Hector inclined onto his elbows. "I am waiting for fate to overtake me and what about you, Jacky? A snug little cell you have built for yourself here - well-armed with all these spiky defences prepared to repulse life. What’s this thing?" He sat up and placed on his lap a rusted kind of dog-comb. "I think it’s called a feather-splitter, for splicing the wings of hawks and falcons. Makes them less wild." The antique business made Jack feel secure and he thought it a bit caddish for Hector to bring up the cell thing. " I don't think it appropriate for us to be seen in the town together but come upstairs to my sanctum. Your face was fairly regular in the "Sun' for a while.” Now why should Rawlings be totting around the place with a recognizable hero? Might he be recruiting Rawlings for an expedition? “You've met the locals, the two with the spoons. Village life is like the cloistered one - a closed order." Suddenly Jack felt it was good to be speaking about 'them' instead of with them. Hector admitted another engagement, yet his curiosity won over. Not actually affection for his brother but a chance to uncover implications for himself, if Smiths actions turned criminal. Where was there another such alien and blasted, earthy configuration of dwellings for his potential ruin to tunnel? Bland-ford.... what possible dignity could it af-ford to broken Carpenters. * * * Whilst occupied in the region [Hector was booked to deliver an evening lecture in Dorchester], he thought he may as well pay a call on the literary bombshell, William Sorley-Sharpe. Ensconced behind a gigantic wall festooned with meshing vines, the gables of a Victorian factory-red building pricked, alert, like cats ears. Sharpe lived loudly there with his Fabian wife and a savage Dachshund. Hector had dabbled in the shallows of rarefied literary thermal - pools to warm his feet, but never truly succumbed to their luscious, licking waters, it was more a case of his floundering having attracted the great-white wits, their lizard-like eyes keenly attuned to selecting the expert bathers from the frankly hopeless and then ripping them to shreds. Awkwardly, Hector had tried to deflect them from his scent of lax education, some that is who minded. His running away to sea at age sixteen, generally mellowed any faux pas with a patina of Melville or Jack London or coal miners who wrote. His having down pat a conversational device of flipping the trajectories of oncoming barbs and shooting them back at their manufacturers, aided the creep towards pseudo-artistic acceptance. At once he noticed and admired the hulking combination of metals, a mighty steed of a motorcycle smudging gravel in the Sharpe's driveway. Their maid said it belonged to an acquaintance of the Sharpes very recently returned from the Middle East. Hector was shown into the disorganized study where three backs at a bookshelf simultaneously swivelled like weathervanes. "Sir Hector, how nice of you to visit." Alice Sorely-Sharp extended her hand and beamed. " We saw an advertisement for your slide show tonight. Will it be like Hunts, poor Hunt...” "Not quite." Because I'm alive and he is dead, retorted thought. Hector detected they could all mind-read. Following further introductions and pleasantries, a pristine volume was thrust into his hands. With four people in an undernourished study, Hector felt captainish though wasn't at all confident he could dominate the new man. Sharpe was alright. He sucked-in Hector's glorious exudations as a crippled sailor would drink in the tobacco smoke, salt-smell and exotic yarns discharged with cargoes from far-flung ports. And because Carpenter openly eschewed that undemocratic clique-system that generates class-systems, Alice could almost applaud his dearth of intellectual rigour. It was a volume of war poetry which the motorcyclist appeared to covet with the ardour of a lover, a lover of precious things. Hector dipped in, pretty modern stuff. He couldn't resist an urge to stir. He trained his eyes on the sandy-hair of Potts, for this was the small fellow's name, then jauntily enumerated the multifarious functions which his deprived comrades had found the pages and plates of the ships extensive library, perfectly designed to fulfill. Kindling fires and wiping pans. Of course the most shameful job undertaken by the most divinely printed authors, he invited the trio to deduce or choose to ignore. Potts sort of cowered like a university chap, Hector initially observed but actually said, in a smouldery voice, that he believed the ultimate and most beneficial use for any bound or unbound work was as an incendiary. His own "Morte D'Arthur” met its end on a railway sleeper in the middle of a desert, rammed with explosives and soaked in fuel. Blazing the pathway to mediaeval wisdom like a Phrygian torch in the star-peppered night. "G. E. has spent a number of years combing Syrian wastelands for ruined cities," said William winking at Potts who grinned back, excluding Hector from their joke, "But lately its been the war..." "I've just come back from Jordan. We are trying to establish a state there for the Arabs." "Are you a politician? I'm sorry but I can't place the name 'Potts'," Hector queried. "Mr Potts is really Colonel Pink, the Arabian Pink, Isn’t that so G.E. I can't bear all this tomfoolery. William thinks it’s farcical and plays it up but amongst friends incognitos are simply unfunny bores. Its not likely Sir Hector is going to run off to the press, is it Sir Hector? G.E hopes a change of name will lead people to found their judgements on the merit of his character and not reputation. But I don't know if he intends to publish under the pseudonym. By the way, I cannot continue to address you as Sir Hector. Will Hector do? You did tell us the knighthood just happened to be tied in with an acceptance of the money." Alice who had earlier left the tiny study to make arrangements for afternoon tea, had taken possession of the doorway, half-excited by the diverse sample of humanity that confronted her. The thin, the big and the self-contained. She wished the manly, vapid decorum to crumple and for her ceaseless jabbering to be its crumpler. Now, thought Hector, she will direct some satire at the King, whom he had met and found inoffensive. The woman was most likely a bolshy sympathizer from whom even the blowing up of children shook not a tear. Sharpe and his wife exemplified the 'marriage-of-minds' type partnership, almost an academic body. A woman without emotion was a woman who denied her sex. As the men filed past Mrs Sorley-Sharpe in the doorway, Hector saw her pat Pink or Potts on the back not like a mother but like a superior officer and he visibly flinched. Alice matched an adjective to object - 'unrepeatable action'. Wartime trauma had heightened Pott's physical sensitivity. As the afternoon wore on, Potts retraction of life became clearer. Whatever he did, he did it in a reduced-fat fashion. Was he trying to preserve his energy? Was he trying to outdo the furniture? All his mousy gestures and curled body-parts and lowered eyes and soft voice and over-hanging locks- slightly effete? Or was he acting the role of alienated, misunderstood youth, damaged goods? Hector himself had used to stand in the guarding- ones- integrity posture but only when a young black sheep in a snowy mob. Perhaps Potts wasn't yet easy with the Sharpe's or perhaps he shied from Hectors unscholarly achievements. Or was he simply incognito like brother Jack, hiding from himself and the world? Then again, if his business happened to be politics... "I tried politicking once," said Hector breezily to Pink, but I think it was my Irishness that weaned off the voters." The two had been left in the garden together, pointedly, by their hosts who must have felt them to share some interests because surely it wasn't a pairing of personality. Pink said he too had Irish blood, on his father’s side. But no further political ambitions. Hector would now forsake his internal Smithologizing for fund-raising. If only he could lift some august-body onto his cause, like every bloody university in England. "Have you a position pending at any particular scholarly institution?" he asked Pink. "I know the resolution of the war in Europe has left many at a loose end." Including himself. "Sharpe thinks you could become governor or Iraq." That was a long way from the treacherous Southern ice. Hector quickly began to despair of Pinks proving a munificent chance encounter. "I suppose I shall continue writing my book, ' Pink replied, precise. "I want to write about the desert people and their traditions and about certain cities and about.... I just want to write. The Arabian peninsula is full of fascinating things to write about." So here was another would-be Burton squirming in his ordinary clothes. But when they drew near to the wonderful shining machine suddenly G.E.'s eyes flashed like the headlamps of a speeding car clipped by sunlight and then released into passing shade. Outside, the deeply recessed, crisp sky-blue eyes allied him with the elemental blues of ocean and sky that only ice could absorb fully, and exalt. "I'm going to scour every lane and road in England. This is my ticket," he said, basting his hand with the sun-warmed juice of a new leather saddle. Having roved like himself, Pink thought, this other man would appreciate the pull of the yet untravelled. "I've taught myself alot about the internal combustion engine. Towards the end of our campaign the Rolls Royce thundered into the desert. It proved less temperamental then camel flesh and virtually eliminated our need of it." Hector chuckled deep in his throat before asking Potts if he ever ate camel. The answer was yes. Potts sinewy skin bore stigmata of exposure to fierce weathers, noticed Hector, his eyes following the worn hands petting of the motor-cycle in repose, like a solitary coal-veined boulder. In no way a pale, boneless flopping of the aesthetic hand. Crafty hands. "Esqiumaux dogs have their drawbacks. In certain seasons, under certain conditions such as sexual deprivation, starvation, blizzard, their aggression is legendary, we had one.... ripped its companions throat out. And then they would enmasse attack the floating penguin population. Leather halters were easily bitten through by the hungry beasts, even consumed." "So, said Potts, "you would agree then that internal combustion offers the soundest, most sensible solution." "Only,” delivered Hector as though rehearsing his oratory, " if the terrains are sound. A wheel like a hoof will sink disastrously into fresh snow. Success requires a minimum of such snow, no sastrugi and no dunes, no flints eh...the flinty desert?" Hector's ignorance rankled. Maybe he could damp it down with regurgitated snippets from his boyhood twelve-volume set of 'Lands and Peoples’. However, Potts seemed his own representative rather than a speaking trumpet for uncivil forces set on undermining the dilettantism of an independent thinker. So Hector could safely confess: "Drifted around the rim of the region but never actually gone inland." Later when Sir Hector had departed, Alice who had been blatantly peering at he and G.E. through the parlour window instead of telephoning, as she had said, and William who had likewise, although at his desk, been wafting his gaze through his study panes, invited Pink to join them in Dorchester for the polar lecture and slide presentation. Possibly, but then the lateness of hour would require he undertake a non-stop all-night cycle ride, his headlamp like the globular moon guiding highwaymen on their grim and bloody routes. "I'm a little concerned," Alice delicately announced, " for the welfare of Sir Hector." "And what are the latest rumours? " William quizzed. "Is he ailing?" "Not that I'm aware. He's been borrowing money. Emily Carpenter has been canvassing the fact. She's desperate but he continues to give away an amount of whatever he gets, to hospitals. Some of those unfortunate men he rescued have yet to be fully paid. He was their employer, you see." G.E. looked confused: " Would it be unreasonable to suggest his chances of going exploring again have slimmed since we talked about an hour ago. He seemed fairly confident. First he's going to Norway to look at ships..." Sorley-Sharpe shook his head. "I wonder whether parliament is happy to endorse the scheme. They Commons can usually scrape up funds but after the Hunt debacle and Carpenter's near thing and an over-abundance of war-heroes..." "I know" Alice quickly said. "I will see if I can interest Katherine Hunt. I'm sure she has a soft spot for the arctic-antarctic business."
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