The Promise Ese (19)
* * * During the day, he and Mackintosh applied themselves to secretarial duties, that is, answering correspondence. Priority of reply went to 'sweet possibilities', which included any dealings with those in high places, foreign countries, dubious types [diamond-lipped ones], the super wealthy, tycoons, billionaires, royalty, bald men and show biz. Press came next, the anonymous public then the relations. Patiently, Mackintosh dumped paper cairns across a chipped and bowing table retrieved for the old office, where as Mac had been forewarned, Carpenter intended to 'kind of camp’ until Lady Carpenter moved back into their London address. Men that meant something in the world ran things from offices in the city, he thought. Just setting up a sign had activated previous expeditions, his old gang of merry men had suddenly manifested, such had been the mystical power of a sign. Hector fiddled about with the private-personal stuff. "This," he said "should be burned. More accusations of my past duplicity... nonetheless it must be preserved for the sake of history. Do you think I sound like Hunt, this having to do things for some lofty purpose such as Science. Now there’s a man who cared for his reputation, a true child of the RGS. A Darwinian, a poet, a navy man, brave and....unoriginal." Mac normally spent much of his dictation time bucking up the boss so he said: "You have an equal if not finer record and reputation." "Well in certain circles they consider me as an 'example' of some endangered type. Early twentieth-century man." If only fate would grant him one last chance to change the pattern. This was the hope. Carpenter lurched to the window and gazed at various hat-crowns, umbrellas, packages and scowls which obscured human identities. He would like to have spied the cheery face of someone known to him, to bolt downstairs and waylay them. He could sense the paper cairn behind his back, known as 'Bill', towering like a major depot. Bet they've forgotten the dreamed-of case marked 'treat'. How they had looked forward to the sweetmeats so thoughtfully deposited at the Bluff. His imagination ran on a thick mix of Southern allusions and ‘nobilmente'. A drab herd crowding the pavements he could divvy up into penguins and seals, traffic became sledges blundering by. He chuckled at a perky, muff-like dog tottering along as if to remind the Swedes a British dog is what a dog is - unexpendable, functionless, highly ridiculous. Could another push to the south fix things? How could he possibly promise to organize again men and things when he made his wife beg friends for support, made her ‘manage’? "Lady Carpenter's coming up to town next week. She may stay. Did I tell you, Mac?" He spoke boldly, brightly against the street noise without facing the room but when no reply ensued, he turned, said, less ebulliently: "I'll do some letters now.” "Canadian government's turned you down", announced Mackintosh, intaking breath dramatically. "Is that definite?' Hector grabbed a stiff beige letter addressed to his erstwhile canned-food concern and could hardly credit its formality. Reynolds, the big man, had turned him down. The holiday at his beach house.... quickly he scanned his memory for a cause - they'd seemed happy together, they’d battled at bridge, quaffed cocktails, enjoyed poetry, tracked sea-birds. Emmy had even braved the Atlantic in pursuit of social success. He recalled Reynold's wife, Arlene acting chummy with Em. Reynolds had virtually applauded Hectors every utterance, now, he presumed, because the rejection message skirted around reasons, a turned stone must have uncovered a viper. "Here's a second letter. It confirms the appointment of a Canadian party to survey the same area of coastline." Hector recalled Arlene again, the beautiful Arlene, sun-brown Arlene and her painted finger-nails. Early boastful remarks from Sir Hector about this collaboration between nations breaking new ground etc., rang again tunelessly in Mac's memory, how he 'had the governor of Canada in his pocket', but as a confidante of the great man, such uncertainty, let downs and vain hyperbole inevitably ending in uproar, failed to stun. Perched on the desk, smoking, Hector merely said, "It's personal, I think." Foolish, he thought, those intimate conversations about manliness. Lucky survivors, playthings of fate, he'd said humbly, and she'd asked about seal blood and blubber and how she was sure it made ordinary men hard like savages and the deprivation, the paring away of sensation stimulated instinct and how she liked to live instinctively herself and how her husband reminded her of a sponge. Hector felt he would have liked to have tossed her to the men after they had regained strength. He explained about the effects of freezing temperatures and she had said, its warm, its summer, and they had gone swimming. But what had she told Reynolds? There was more than talk? Hector looked at his calloused hands, softening up, healing, shaking even. Was she right? Visions of abandonment on a tropical atoll - brown up his hands, construct a sinuous, light-weight craft from fronds then navigate to South America using native dead reckoning. Observe what physical impact heat, fruit and abundance of unconstrained indigenous island flesh worked on seaman suspicious of humidity. Then all the world's Arlene’s, basking beneath the tent of blue, savouring their last passionate coupling with a hard man, might sleep satisfied. Limply Arlene's instincts had responded to the grimy town flaneur burgeoning within him while her own man, Reynolds, loomed like a fit Goliath. A sponge? Then he had said: Your beauty overwhelms me. Tenderness in her voice... * * * ‘Irksome, loopily affectionate, on tenterhooks, fidgety’… ran Emily's immediate assessment of her Husband's ‘welcome-back-to-the-big-city’ mood. Percy had once mistaken his Daddy for a postman because he sometimes wore hats that sat awkwardly like postman’s' caps also Daddy delivered him like a package to other rooms if the situation demanded absolute peace. Well he had promised to abandon his stretcher at the office and promised to devote himself to the brood. He would teach Charles, the eldest of the three, to master chess, a nonsensical game his prating pater really could not stand. Straight away, a lack of newsprint around the house convinced Hector of Emmy's total collapse from an Edifice worth praising, to a shepherds hut, quaint and rural and redolent of livestock. "But Hector, I've only been here five-minutes.'' "Time enough to lay siege of a newsstand.” "I feel you are too much with the boy," he admonished, over breakfast, the solitary meal they used to habitually chew together. "So I think he should be left more often with whoever's available, whether your sister or Mrs Lloyd or that maid." "Or the postman. Percy thinks you are a postman. He only has uncles for comparison and the various shopkeepers and our friends and very occasionally your friends. In Percy's view they don't seem to have jobs but mostly lounge." Emily insinuated for the duration of her tea-cup, "And they all sport elegant suits. They must be the senior postman who don't pay Daddy very well, that is why he looks untidy sometimes." "Yes?" His interjection startled her. "I'm surprised you listen to my babbles. I say: Change clothes! You say your whole life is a ruin, shocking talk from the world’s hugest optimist, but your children suffer enough growing-pains without their father creaking around like an old tattered scarecrow since he's not even old. Gwen will be with us next week. Her school is closing for repair. She only has one photograph of her father very upright in his uniform. It perfectly illustrates the sermonizing in his letters." Did he have her creeping religion to thank for this outburst? "Why not reinforce my values, Mother, the impregnability of ones inner being, Teach her the superior value of moral truth above meagre trappings...Mother." He thrust the word into her harpoon-like. She continually would exclude herself from social engagements pleading some problem with the children. Their appearances together had dwindled to greetings quayside or quayside send-offs. "I've been without fresh clothing for months on end but that didn’t split one fibre of my soul. Do children care, dirt-scrunching children? In fact I could run out to the street in rags, even unclothed and still feel capable." Of what, Emily feared, drawing a crowd? Her horror-struck look coaxed an infectious smirk to his lips. If he dashed round the table he could spread it to her, lip to lip, the woman who subsided into motherhood somewhat as his own mother, emptied out by many births, paralysed within the drear recesses of a dim chamber and, even duller, her cavity of mind. Emily, on the contrary, blossomed freshly that morning, seaside sunbursts fading gradually from her hair soon to be replaced by city soot. But she turned her mouth aside. He humphed... Their house stood in a prestigious green suburb, sometimes noisy. "How to you like that clatter of machinery, m’dear?", he inquired, closely. For the first time in years she felt nervous of her husband's proximity, of the hands kneading her chair-back, the marmalade breath tickling the tip of her right ear, the weight of invisible body hemming her in. Then she thought perhaps... "How are all your pains, Dearest?" And automatically she broke the strain. This one entanglement, their marriage, thoroughly drained Emily's reserves. "They come and go," he said, desultory. "Like yours and everybody's." What did it matter if the cramps were sometimes severe and all- consuming? But still he kissed her hair in a mischievous fashion. "No need to sweat, Sweet-o-mine," he said, softly. "Your boy's grown up. He's outgrown love and games," and besides Emily's staid reserve made him feel old. They had crawled through muck together; a congealing rime of ash and disappointment defined the creases of their face. He knew from experience that snow would prove an ineffectual soap. * * * Clara's manager, Pat Hickox, tolerated Hector, lovable rogue, and looked forward to their jocular debates on cultural affairs and to after theatre drinks in Miss De Lune's dressing-room where sparkling glasses, earrings, repartee seasoned a very gentlemanly jealousy. And though by flashing talent and title the chap had clinched a lower rung and key, his claim drew scant reflection from the splendid star aglow atop the tree. Hallucination, or was the Hickox glow on the wane, wondered Hector as the said triumvirate, missing one, stumbled up to Clara's door? This hopeful suspicion followed on the heels of a social success at Claire De Lune's home-coming soiree at which he had carpeted the entire throng with his speech in homage to the Ellen Terry acting tradition, the Bernhardt ennui and the Siddons commingling with eminent persons. None of his hastily whipped up blancmange made any sense at all and delighted his enemies almost more than the tipsy well-wishers. Marvellous that this man of action dared to explore well-trod regions of the liberal arts and make pronouncements as if his trail was the first. Many, in assorted fields, had questioned his calculations and their methods of production. Could he expect the fog to sweep away future footprints as completely as the driven snows? Not unless etched with deep conviction, impressed. He did utter impressively. "You seem almost your old self," Clara smiled, radiant and rosy-cheeked, inflamed by champagne and promotional success, for her alliance with the famous explorer undeniably drew notice. "Pat and I were talking while we were away about, you know, your half-heartedness. It's gone. Has something happened?" "Nothing in particular. Emily has moved back to Ermine Street. She can manage a household wonderfully well so it’s one less bother for me, for us." He thought: For my creditors. She thought: Marital bliss. "I'm rarely at home, of course." By now they had brightened up the boudoir with a young fire and boiled some water in Clara's new electric kettle.
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