Storymania - The Promise Ese by June M Harcourt

The Promise Ese (29)
June M Harcourt

                worsted, wrong would triumph......."

'That’s not from this poem". Gwennie interjected. This is the 'Power' poem -

       "Where amid what strifes and storms

             May wait the adventurous quest,"

Emily had overhead and automatically conjoined:

  " Power is Love - transports, transforms

       Who aspired from worst to best..."

Then the fragments blended with laughter so that each singer wistfully believed in a strike of golden memories. And each singer shivered with a passing dread.

"Happens all the time," explained Emmy to O'Connor who looked startled, "Care to stay for lunch and another serving of the same?"

     "Well, we’ve had enough hijinks," demurred Hector in a distracted state. When he did but snigger, the tender cuts on his pivot of cheek-bone split and blood defied the dressings. Rather adopt a compulsive twitching towards the alternate doors, ominous, at each end of their dining room, which manic movement confounded Emily. She kept asking why, whom did he expect?

“Its my watch.”

Gwennie remarked about that same blood-sucking doctor conscripting an army of attendants from the lunatic asylum that she would be able to fend off with the poker and her mother saw the girls jaw set, paternally intransigent. Hector’s stretching across to pinch her arm in agreeance, his fake merry eyes waning like doleful crescent moons, proved anything but supportive to a girl trying to gee up her father. His ribs must have been tearing at their cumbrous shell. He grimaced in addressing the phantom form of young O'Connor, who up until then had been internally refining an expose of this fantastical luncheon-table odyssey to various scoffers of the common room. He started at the apparent cue.

        Dissect the characters of the three? A philologist, baker and tinker are we. Lawrence first commenced dissertation fashion to flesh out the philosopher’s intellectual skeleton, respectfully, but Hector’s dismissive hand soon hushed him.

“That’s not the way to sum ‘em up,” said Hector, voice tracing hand like an aerialist. “ Ask yourself three things. Is the fellow a drinker, does he have a mother, can he play solitaire…oh and…how is his appetite?”

Lawrence pondered for a moment.

  “And whether or not he has a better’s luck?” he produced, insinuating. What did it mean?

Hector sat back, somewhat piqued by his temporary disability which dissuaded him from putting hands behind his head in the ‘well, well, well…’ style of deliberation. They pattered idly on a blank plate, waiting for cheese. Winter was upon them; the dining room had fully revived from its estivation. It was dark and dismal by early afternoon, lights projected star-rays on the street, unreally. Vagrantly, as if through a shutter-slat of bandage, he surveilled O’Connor.

“Perhaps,” he sighed, pensive. “No-one has conclusively rated chance in the odds of a successful expedition. Weather looks like chance, but some think it’s a malign force determined to rout them. When we provision the parties we try to ensure against every kind of chance but a slip is the main problem then, and one can’t predict the crevasses. I would say the chance of surviving a crevasse depends on one’s personal quality of luck. I could ask if someone has survived any near misses previous then we can at least weigh up his providential history against the potential dangers.’

“If I was luck-poor there wouldn’t be much history to examine.” O’Connor discerned he might gamble with Hector, so apparently weakened by this ‘accident’. “What about the two souls who disappeared at the tail end of the ‘Stalwart’ traverse?”

“What about them?” Carpenter looked intensely serious.

Had anyone analysed their past record of risk and response? “Bergstrom has said that the excuse of ‘luck’ is used by the ill- prepared to explain away their persistent failures. He’s justified in saying so, I think. He’s the only one to have surmounted every obstacle. Surely the conditions he faced couldn’t have been so different.”

“But the tragic deaths of those poor men can in no way be attributed to luck, isn’t that right, dear?’ Emily’s tone, so supportive, impressed her husband.

“Fools, they were fools, those men,’ muttered Gwen.

“Certain pitfalls are undoubtedly avoidable, providing proper caution is taken and one pays due respect to Nature,”

It was a sensitive issue for him. Hector’s bandage stanchioned responsibility, quailing before this new reef knocking at his trusty record secured for having no man perish under his command, directly. The women could buttress him too, if it threatened to become one of those days when the masculine degree of him scurried into wainscotting and the maidenly, worrisome, fretting part resignedly took the floor. A telephone bell battering the sanctity of the vestibule, he knew the door bell would duly peal; he could feel O’Connor’s forensic heat. But it was only an amicable conversation.

“Now, he said, if we can take your philosopher along with us the culpability aspect can just be raved away. Destiny, why are some lucky and the rest unlucky? Why is it that an error of judgement for some can turn to gold for the courageous and quick decision maker? Perhaps it is all a matter of perspective” Hector had proffered one of his ‘old chestnuts’ – it’s the way of seeing things that designates their substance.

“A simplistic notion which apportions to personality a weight of autonomy the anatomist has yet to quantify,” said their guest, succinctly.

Gwennie smiled as if she concurred. O’Connor truly owned a Browningesque grip of phrase. He turned to her, warming, after her lugubrious mother had ducked out to speak on the telephone.

“And what do you think, Miss Carpenter, can a view from one window encapsulate the scene for the viewers at all other windows?”

She blushed and said she thought it could. Hector snorted approval while his ear canals clawed at the span between table and hall-doorway, beyond which a disjointed monologue of Emmy to receiver spasmodically sailed towards them on the draught. ‘Accident’… very bad…no, that’s not necessary………children.’ Was it her?

Father can make the sun come out just by glancing at the clouds, Gwennie felt like saying, embarrassed by the naļve fancy. She also wondered who it was at the invisible end of the telephone, whether it was the beautiful, tremulous lady who had bewitched her little brother. Hector sallied forth to investigate.

     When Emily sensed her husband nearing, she broke off and held out the telephone receiver, the heavy, moulded object that’s appealed like the derriere of some ebony idol, blemished by finger-prints, glossed by her breath. Her arm was straight. She waited for the swift impact of his hand against hers as he retrieved it, then satisfied, returned to the table. It was, she thought, in an uncharacteristic brittle pitch he crunched out the words ‘invisible man’ to the second- in- line, online.

     Because all sorts and sizes of rubble panned in his head.

1.misunderstanding. 2. Amazement. 3.self-sacrifice. 4. responsibility for all on board. 5.Hurt. 6.Love? 7.Saving oneself.

“I am at the theatre. What was that smack for? Why must you keep running away? Accident? Can’t you look after yourself for a ‘bloomin’ second. Not supposed to see you…Walt and Pat have buddied. Are you trying to tell me – that was your intention? In effect. Well, he sure feels sorry for me, both do. Pat’s finished with you. Marvellous? I started it…Walter started it but one little tickle and Hecs the villain and all my friends are tense…and I’m so lonely and you have her and your darling kids – and I’m going to strum my lute. Didn’t Walter surprise you, Hunn, a little bit? You don’t know what there’s been in my life. How could you have said you knew? Suspected? Be straightforward with me – of course she’s eavesdropping…I like to give the impression of wide experience, to some, but Walt’s, he’s the only long-term thing, up until us. He hauled me over as much as any man’s entitled to with his ‘missus’- your word, Mister. Monosyllables. All listening. Yes, yes, anyway…. Walt’s weakening, good? Pat got him drunk, better? We might all go away to the south of France for a holiday, the new three, bar one. Lawyers. I’m only hinting, you work it out but you already know my acting improves after a nip or two and now – the end of the week. Normally we’d be together when she’s off at the Mouth…Oh…it’s wrecked. These phones aren’t that clear now no-one can hear me but you, sweetiest, scratchiest..”I’m so sorry. How’s your face? Like me to lick it over again, this time, by tongue, all wet – should have done it then and there. Pat thinks I need a rest, that I’m overwrought, OUT OF THE PICTURE Even so, you might enjoy it,…what if we score each other, all over- slowly – first the soft little dip behind the ear… then all the way down the back… then the tingling soles of our feet … up the front of the leg…Don’t say ‘speak up’, you can hear me, just dream what I’m saying, sweet-pie- very slowly – very slow pain… Gosh I wish I was warm in bed with you – I can’t look forwards to Christmas and no pudding!”



                                                                                                                                                          Chapter 6

    The weather turned out simply unbearable. Katherine had arrived courtesy of the Sorley-Sharpes own swish conveyance but despite the hasty employment of an umbrella had had her intriguing raiment spattered by wet gravel, raindrops then dog fur and bumped herself in the warren of deplorably arranged passages - a very problematical house design. One could instantly surmise a shying away from the Palladian or Moorish, and a trending towards quaint on the home-grown blueprint of the Sharpe’s provincial little Victorian dolls house of a residence. A less romantic vision splendid, soggy in the rain, she could scarcely conceive of. And her thoughts at once fled to the Mediterranean Eden where many rosewatered weeks of her life had been whiled in the delicious grasses and sands and netted divans of Spartan hideaways quiescent amongst the olive plantations. Then what would it be for lunch? Stodge, stodge, stodge. However, the interesting and mysteriously attractive Potts had been flagged as an eating companion, a man not always easy to arrange appointments with. The man, Katherine believed, possessed of the finest feet of her experience. Strong, dependable feet. Discreetly powerful as a leopards.

     But it was not he alone who rose to greet her in the working-class type reception room, close beneath the suffocating downpour roar. Handel, the war poet, Sharpes sister Beatrice Wendell, Amberly the ageing composer all squashed in like rabbit babies with Potts and wonder of wonders her least favourite explorer, the arrogant and infuriating Sir Hec!

     She couldn’t possibly continue snubbing him forever and couldn’t possible restrain the smirk prompted by a memory of that sweet little signal she’d offloaded at the ‘Collisseum’ like the sigh of someone content to die, at peace. She appreciated his dismay upon seeing her, if arm- locking can be notated as a language. His dudgeon screamed at her, but no one else. Pink coyly peeped out from under his tumbling sandy hair, in an as beguiling way as the gaunt, nigger-tanned celluloid snapshots of himself framed by the flowing, luminous robes of an Arabian prince, arrested audiences besotted with more traditional ideas of battle than the filthy trench ones. Here was the embodiment of Arthur. Magnificent on camel as crusaders on jangling steed. He had been, and now the world knew. Ah, the power of the cinema!

     Sherry ‘flips’ before lunch. Even Fabians had to grease their tongues. ‘What?’ they all shouted above the rain. Sharpe, full of a new satire, read aloud some parts hoping to make them guess the model for each buffoon. The mouth-pieces wore steelier disguises; mostly he modelled them himself, but dug up one obscure ethicist from an obscure encyclopaedia to spruke an anglicised Schopenhaurian willlessness. Yes this would be his anti-german effort, better late than never. Alice mocked the work with a wife’s impunity; others wondered what it would amount to on stage. Where was the drama? Amberly might compose some incidental music like his ‘Manfred at the Precipice’ if he would wake. Oldness and Wiseness. Pink and Carpenter, whilst acknowledging the combination, admitted its absence from their own shakily handwritten scenarios. Snoring was not a thing to die of. Who’d ever heard of the ‘snore of the brave’? Katherine marvelled how seamlessly the heroes present could don and shake off their parts when required to amuse a preening host and hostess. Hunt hadn’t grasped the knack. He would have worn it like a shroud, he wouldn’t have fit it or would have fidgeted so much, it have fallen off! She didn’t believe in life after death so she knew he couldn’t hear her thoughts, but then he may have agreed. How he loved to hear himself run down…poor old Leo, her Richard, her lionheart.

   In her honour the Sharpes unveiled a bulbous bottle of Chianti to chase down the stodge. What an incongruous thumbing-ones nose at the pitiful monotonous, deluging grey. Nearly everyone supposed her life a similarly monotonous pine for the lost husband. She had been pampered by the entire nation ever since that day of the telegram until a populous telegram parade accelerated apace with the machine guns ‘rapid rattle’ and legions of widows began to march with her. Their losses had freed her from black. Loosed her thoughts from white and bent her back to the clay. To Pink’s feet.

     Competing with the Chianti for the award of most astounding were the gruesome scratches on behalf of Hector’s cheek, an ancient vegetable sprung up wild in the Wendell pottager and Handel’s chance meeting with the translator of some Chinese poet he treasured. Katherine could think of nothing to add unless she confessed of her impending marriage to an MP, abroad in the spring. She listened to Hector describe the dog that mauled him. All looked sceptical. No, really a feather-splitter, met one in a murky curiosity shop, swinging from the ceiling, for sprucing up the plumage of hawks. Now Handel who happened to be a hunting man, had not ever heard of such a device. So? Hector would buy it and let it speak in its antique dialect of the doubletted and the bewigged. Really.

     Potts sweeping appearance ‘made’ the film that outclassed any documentary footage she had seen, Katherine informed them all. The Arabs charging, standards a flutter, dust flying, made a change from the monotonous ‘it’. Three lots of penguins in ten years! She tipped her glass at Hector as she gibed at the Antarctic and he couldn’t have enjoyed it more. Some people chose to lampoon the whole business yet inevitably overrode their tomfoolery with a tut tut, shh, its just silly twaddle, we don’t really mean…Hunts wife meant it. He’d been smiling all afternoon, genial and sure. Smiling at her and everybody. He wondered about Potts and she, Potts the reluctant matinee-idol and she the sculptress, the seductress. As he had once wondered about Hunt and she, Hunt the man he was sure none but a mama could love. Temptress. Destructess, empress…. snake-goddess. Such a wordy house!

      Of Course Alice asked about the expedition funding. I have half-found a university where the talk snowballs, in fact with as much velocity as Sharpes Herr Professor, and with about as much depth as his flurry, Hector feared. But he would keep up the plod. He doesn’t come across as mope-prone, like the last Sunday, thought Alice, or saddened by the scratches, or sickly but quite positive and Katherine buoyed by the Italian wine and disporting some jade extravagantly set, miffed by the rain, yet otherwise pleasant…time to do business.

    Since the garden was so absurdly out of bounds Alice foresaw problems with her division of the company. Eight people meant four couples and one in private meant three spaces and a very pointed arrangement style. Men at table was ordinary, Handel and he the smokers would expect to linger, ladies withdrawing was the thing of the swank, he and her closeted in Will’s study, well had to be a purpose. Will could stay in and then apologetically go out but wouldn’t they follow? She cursed the friend who had let her in on the mutual antipathy betwixt Katherine and Hector Carpenter. Common knowledge. Time healed rifts. Let the healing begin today. They hadn’t actually spoken to each other, this she had observed whilst Pink had hardly opened his mouth for anyone else but the remarkable Mrs Hunt. And Hector had been particularly attentive to everyone in turn, indiscriminate except with her, and their waffly little pet Dachshund. So a ruse would be required, a lure – that map! Of course.

      The gorgeous pageant of sea-monsters and whirlpools and Portuguese cartography which William had recently grabbed at an auction for inspirational purposes. A prop for the prime candidate in his dreamt of comedy about the sea, the signature card of his retired and fusty admiral who builds a house like a ship and bombards people with wit from its embrasures. Now any sailor worth his salt must long for the whiff of charts, Katherine doted upon art, so…But then Sharpe would surely jump up and bluntly say it; Come to some arrangement, my lady, you have told us you have some money and can’t for the life of you decide how to spend it.

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