‘I’ve always loved machines as well,’ she said, ‘right from when my father bought his first motor car. I still tinker when I can. If the lawnmower goes bang it’s always me who mends it. I suppose that’s where you get your fascination from, which is very gratifying. I understand perfectly well but, all the same …’
They were so close in spirit that she knew when to stop talking, and he realized how pleasant it was to be with someone who sensed your thoughts as much as you were aware of theirs. ‘Let’s go down and have tea.’ She sprang from the bed like a girl of twenty. ‘Your father likes it exactly at four, and so do I. Mustn’t disappoint him.’
‘I have to wash off the grime of travel first.’ He loved her now, with no vicious afterthoughts, and gave her a few minutes to go down and repeat what he had said to his father so that there would be less pain and mystery as to why he had immersed himself in a factory, though he hoped they would not make his stay comfortable enough for him to regret leaving.
There were so many flowers surrounding the Old Hall that, looking down from the window, their various scents and colours — bees working among roses, honeysuckle, lupins and bougainvillaea, and many whose names he didn’t know — gave the impression of being in a vast undertaker’s parlour.
He wanted the visit to be over, though couldn’t decently depart for another twenty-four hours. Every minute was torment, and ought not to be, he knew, if only he could learn to accept being there. It was hard not to look every few minutes at his watch. This itching to get clear, to flee along the lanes and back to the train, was against his deeper grain, an unnecessary burden, and especially irritating since the St Vitus yen existed only on the surface, a weak mesh of impulses dominating the stronger part of him which was capable of enjoying the stay and being made much of. If they hadn’t been his parents the problem wouldn’t exist, and anger at the inability to overcome his aversion made it even more difficult to do so.
Having recognized his disorder he went downstairs feeling more calm, yet was embarrassed at the homely and affectionate way they were so absolutely at ease with one another, at seeing how his father adored his mother, and she him, as if they had met only weeks ago. After tea in the lounge Maud said: ‘I do wish you wouldn’t puff all the time at that pipe, my dear.’
Hugh reached over to smooth her wrist, and gave a great laugh. ‘When I give up smoking, my love, call in the doctor, though there won’t be much he can do for me then.’
‘And Herbert’s smoking, too.’
‘So I notice.’ Hugh winked at his son. ‘I have a couple of cigars for us to demolish after dinner, the last of my Burma cheroots. I came back with boxes and boxes. Then again, though, there are those Havanas you found for me last Christmas.’
‘Oh, so I did.’ She smiled.
Herbert, remembering, took a piece of orange cleaning cloth from his jacket pocket and unwrapped a highly polished brass lighter. ‘I meant to give you this, Father, a present I cobbled together at my machine in the factory.’
Hugh rolled it over in his big hand and then, flame first time. His features gave off a mischievous flicker at Herbert’s siding with him against Maud. ‘You made it all on your own?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Beautiful. A bespoke lighter. I shall treasure it.’ He pressed it twice more to get a flame, before slipping it into his waistcoat pocket, then stood from the deep armchair without using his hands as support. ‘Excuse us, Maud, I shan’t keep him from you for long.’
‘And where do you intend dragging me to?’ Herbert smiled, also standing.
Hugh did a ‘With my head chopped off, underneath my arm’ walk to the door. ‘Come up to my study, and you’ll see how I spend a lot of my time.’
Glad to avoid a stultifying melt into nothingness, Herbert followed, his father’s back as upright as ever, though his tread up the stairs was slow enough. He had been through trench warfare in France, and fought in the jungles of Burma, leading his battalion and later shuffling the wreck of his brigade against the Japanese to great effect. He envied him for having done so much, wanted to take all his experiences into himself.
The table was covered with overlapping maps, some neatly folded in stacks, others opened from rolls and pinned down by piles of army notebooks. Wads of yellowing papers, ragged at the edges and stained with mud (and maybe even blood) were not yet arranged in any order. ‘Don’t tell me,’ Herbert said. ‘You’re writing your memoirs.’
Hugh leaned against the enormous glass-fronted bookcase. ‘It was your mother’s idea. Well, I always knew I would, one day, but I let her think she set me on to it. If I don’t do them for publication I can give all this to the Imperial War Museum. Or to you eventually, if you’re interested.’
He realized he was. ‘I’d be glad to have them.’ Yet would he? They’d probably get mildewed in Mrs Denman’s shed, until forgotten, or the ragman carted them away — a prospect that gave real pain, however.
Hugh unfolded a map and bent over, lowering his magnifying glass to the close brown contours, then shifting its circle to the yellow of cultivated areas. Herbert smoothed over the exquisite colours with his fingers. ‘What a lovely map.’
‘Of course it damned well is,’ Hugh snapped. ‘Don’t you know that the British soldier always died on the best of maps? But look at it closely, though, and you’ll see what abominable country we had to scramble about in.’
‘I don’t see any roads,’ Herbert said.
Hugh ringed a ford and a hamlet with a soft black pencil, stood up straight. ‘Roads!’ He let out an expressive guffaw. ‘There was never any such thing. It was a hundred degrees up from awful. Mud tracks for donkeys, if you were lucky.’ His mouth came close to Herbert’s ear, who had the presence not to move away. ‘When you get married,’ Hugh whispered, ‘as I’m sure you will one day, always keep your wife happy. Let her think everything that’s good about you is because of her. In my case it happens to be true, but even if it weren’t that’s what I would do. Another thing is, though I don’t know whether I need tell you, is that you never, never, never ever say any of the bad things that come into your mind, either about her or about anything, but especially about her. Only the good things, and even those you must think about carefully in case they can be taken wrongly. A wife is the most precious thing a man can have, and if you live by that, or make the attempt at any rate, your wife will think the same of you.’
‘I’ll try to remember,’ Herbert smiled.
‘There are so many difficulties in life that marital discord ought not to be one of them.’
He stood away, and looked again at the map, gazing with affection and appreciation, as if all his speculations about human nature had their origins in his ability to relate the contours of a map to the shape of the land itself. ‘There are less paved roads in that kind of terrain than the other, except those perfectly paved ones that you make yourself and spend your whole life maintaining.’
Such longspeaking indicated to Herbert how difficult being married to his mother might have been. Some of the times in his father’s life must have been absolute boils and blisters. A photograph of Hugh and his staff showed them standing by a twin-engined transport plane, a row of palm trees behind. Hugh, taller than the rest, was grinning as if he owned the aircraft as well.
‘I’ll remember all you say.’
Hugh put an arm on his shoulder. ‘I’m sure you will. You’ve always been a sensible chap, and we won’t bother you in your life. Everyone has to make his own way, and we’re sure you’ll do well in the end.’
It was a strange world, where only utter agreement made everyone happy, and all was in terms of ‘we’. Whatever the old man said could make no difference. He walked downstairs and into the garden, scent from rose bushes taking him to the grounds of his first school, the perfume of gratuitous cruelty rushing back, though too much in the past to be more than a reminder of days which led to him being where he was and even possibly how he was.