The Road from the Monument Read online

  Harriet Ellis had been silent, glancing from one to other of the speakers with an air of intense interest. Put on to cover up the fact that she hasn’t a notion what to say, Gate said to himself. He pitied her: he had been there himself. With a sudden effort she blurted, ‘I wish I could believe. It’s laziness… If I can’t take it on trust — and I can’t, you know — I ought to be reading the evidence. I don’t seem able to find the time, or the impulse, or… I don’t know. It’s very silly of me.’

  ‘My dear Harriet,’ Gregory said gently, ’you can always tell yourself that God, a God, is a practical need — like food and warmth. Any concept of God will do. I can get on very well with Buddhists.’

  Gate heard himself saying, ‘No.’ Appalled, he stammered, ‘Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking.’

  Covering his lapse — out of kindness quite as much as out of social tact — Beatrice said, ’But, Mr. Gate, you do, don’t you, believe that God is necessary?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, still confused.

  ‘But you believe in Him?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course, but… would you think of asking a child if his mother was necessary to him?’ A ghost, all soft curves, fled past him.

  ‘Ah,’ said Canon Pulmer, ’how sensible.’ He laid his hands flat on his knees, rounded like a woman’s. It was a womanly, even a plebeian gesture. ‘And how far-reaching. As someone — who was it? — has already said: We must love each other or die.’

  Lambert grinned. ‘Blah-blah about love is the fashion now, isn’t it? If you ask me, what’s going to save us isn’t love or God or God-is-love, but precisely the H-bomb itself. Tolerate each other or die — eh?’

  ‘Dear me,’ Arthur Blount said, with an insolence too polite to be unconscious, ’how emphatic you are — you must be right.’ He turned, cordial and condescending, to Gate. ‘What do you think, Mr. Gate?’

  Gate had never been a quick thinker, never able to do himself justice in an argument with clever people. But at this instant his mind made a sudden leap, he knew what he believed, profoundly, and what to say. ‘But there is no connection at all between God and any of the things that are good in their place — peace, social justice, hard work, brotherhood and — oh, the rest of it. None at all. None of them is in the least sacred, we needn’t revere them, they’re merely human ends — they have nothing to do with Him.’ He made a gesture with his small uncared-for hand, square wrinkled fingers, the nails broken and dirty. He was timid and ashamed and absolutely sure. ‘They don’t tell us anything about Him, they don’t give Him to us, do they? They are, you might say, good but not God.’

  His poor hand, Harriet Ellis thought. She noticed, could not help noticing, that the neck of his shirt was soiled as well as ragged. She said in a warm voice,

  ‘But that’s true. Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t any of us — not even Gregory — see it?’

  Gate felt obliged to her for her tact. But I didn’t need it, he thought. She imagines I’m feeling humiliated, and she wants to soothe me for her own comfort. It’s not kindness, it’s a moral weakness…. He knew, because it was one he shared with her.

  Gregory spoke to him gently. As gently, thought Gate, as he would speak to any foolish old man with one foot and most of his wits in the grave.

  ‘You’re right, of course — but there are wider aspects.’

  It broke on Gate with the force of a wave, an icy North Sea wave, pounding and suffocating. Gregory’s belief, his goodness, his sincerity, were all in his head, all a splendid literary exercise, nothing to do with the heart — a construction, a coldly brilliant construction. The compassion he felt swelled painfully in his throat. Then he thought: No, no, I am only a silly old man. There are as many ways of approaching God as there are paths across the sea or one of our Danesacre moors. He’s all right, the boy is all right.

  He was shaking. No one, he thought and hoped, noticed it.

  Gregory’s wife summoned him to sit beside her. It was very much a command, and he composed himself to answer questions without letting her see how little at his ease he was with her and her sharp affable manner.

  ‘How old was Gregory when he first came to you?’

  ‘Ten. Nine or ten.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  He hesitated. What would be the use, even if he wanted to do it — and he was not sure that he wanted it — of summoning into this room, before these eyes, the image, still fresh and untouched, that he might, if he were incautious, lose for ever? He said briefly,

  ‘He had fine eyes — a fine head.’

  She smiled. ‘And you did everything for him?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Gate said simply, ’his father did not die for another ten years after that.’

  ‘But you taught him, you saw to it that he read only what would prepare him to write — as he does — like a young archangel.’

  ‘I’m glad you think that.’

  A blue flash from eyes that were the liveliest he had ever seen pinned him to the back of his chair. ‘Did you imagine I didn’t? I know very well what he is worth — as a writer. As a man, too. You love him, don’t you? Very well, then, you should be able to understand that I feel everything the wife of a great man — who is charming as well as great — ought to feel. Overwhelming respect — as well as the fear of making myself ridiculous by showing it too plainly. Making him ridiculous, too. There is always something a little silly about a man surrounded by adoring women. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I know nothing about feminine adoration.’

  ‘Ah.’ She stared at him for a moment, then pressed her hands on the arms of her chair and stood up, slowly. ‘I want to show you something. Come here.’

  She led him the length of the room to an oil-painting hung in a shallow recess. There were no overhead lights in the room, and as he was fumbling for his spectacles she switched on a light immediately above the frame, and he saw that he was looking at a portrait of Gregory. A large portrait. He had been painted wearing what Gate took to be a dressing-gown of a very splendid sort — there were gold, dark red, green, in it. He was seated with his head tilted back, so that his eyelids covered half his eyes; it gave him a slightly arrogant look. Gate thought this a pity and said so.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. I like it. But — he’s not arrogant. It was surely a mistake to pose him so that he seems to be.’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘he’s not arrogant. He has a great deal of — what shall we say? — vanity? confidence in himself and his importance? In the importance of what he has to say?’ She laughed, a little harshly. ‘I imagine that he posed himself.’

  ‘Who is the artist?’

  She told him. The name meant nothing to Gate, but he had no doubt it was the name of a very celebrated man. There was a good deal in the picture of what it is fashionable to call authority: that is, the painter imposing himself, his manner, his style, his this-is-how-I-see-my sitter.

  ‘I had it painted for his birthday,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘I see.’

  He saw a great deal more. She loved Gregory, and for some reason was unable to live at peace with him; something was missing from their marriage — perhaps, Gate thought, children; perhaps she blamed herself for that, or she resented his devotion to his work and his ambitions, or… what would an old celibate know about the strains and disappointments of even a happy marriage?

  ‘Now that you’ve seen him again — after so long — are you satisfied? Do you think he looks well?’ Without giving him time to answer, she went on tartly, ‘He never has a day’s illness, not so much as a headache. Unforgiveable… Let us go back, shall we?’

  As soon as she had settled again in her chair, Harriet Ellis came to her to say goodbye. Eyes sparkling with malice, Beatrice said, ‘Oh, are you going? I was wondering — but, no, it would be too much trouble. I won’t ask you to do it.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Harriet said eagerly. ‘I’ll do anything you like. What is it, what c
an I do?’

  ‘We-ell. A long time ago, I forget how long, months, I read a book on Chinese painting. I don’t remember the title or the author — it was a large heavy book, bound in red, with blue and gold dragons on the front. It came from the London Library, and I wondered whether, if you searched the right shelves, you could identify it. But——’

  ‘Of course I’ll find it for you,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ll go and look tomorrow.’

  ‘Isn’t it too troublesome?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, quite sure. I’ll find it for you.’

  ‘Too kind,’ Beatrice said.

  Harriet went out of the room clumsily, knocking against a chair as she went, watched as far as the door by a pair of sharp unsmiling blue eyes. Obviously it gave Beatrice acute pleasure to make use of the other woman’s willingness to run a tiresome errand. No doubt, thought Gate, it amuses her to make Harriet pay for her devotion to Gregory by servility to Gregory’s wife. More fool Harriet to let her…. He was vexed.

  He found Lambert at his elbow. ‘Well, Gate, glad to have seen you again,’ he said, with the greatest friendliness. And turned away. Gate watched him placidly as he stooped over his hostess, his whole slack elongated body and saturnine face quivering with his pleasure in being allowed to speak to her with a degree of familiarity — and doing it, too, with an easiness that would have astonished his old Danesacre friends if they had seen him. He feels very safe, Gate thought simply. Very safe, very prosperous…. Time I went away myself, he thought.

  Beatrice held his hand between hers for a minute, and pressed it. ‘How long are you staying in London?’

  ‘A week.’

  ‘Only a week? Dear me, I’m sorry. I’m beginning my retreat tomorrow in — you won’t know it — an Anglican community which is kind enough to let me spend a week there two or three times a year. I shan’t see you again, I’m afraid. But you’ll see Gregory, won’t you? I know he wants to see you as much as possible.’

  Talk of a retreat surprised him: there had been little in her manner to suggest that she took her religion more seriously than any other of her social duties. He thanked her for the evening. Her brother and Pulmer were deep in a low-voiced argument, in one of the windows, and he was relieved that he could slip out without speaking to them. He said quietly,

  ‘I must go, Gregory.’

  ‘Must you?’ Gregory said. His wife gave him a piercing glance, and he went on, ‘Come up to my room before you go. You haven’t seen where I work.’

  He walked off with his light step. Gate followed him out of the room, with relief. They went up to the third floor, into a room immediately above the drawing-room, and as large, stretching across the whole front of the house. A simpler room, but almost as grand: tall arched bookcases with rows of finely-bound books; an immense desk; a long narrow table of pink marble: a recess held a collection of china figures. In one corner there was a bed.

  ‘You sleep here?’

  ‘Yes. This is my bedroom and library as well as my workroom. There is only one other room on this floor, the housekeeper’s bedroom, and she has been trained not to breathe during the days when I stay at home to write.’ He laughed at himself. ‘The floor above this is an attic we don’t use — this room is my ivory tower…. How angry people are with you nowadays if you enjoy living in one…. Here is where I keep the two or three things I bought myself — most of the furniture in the house is my wife’s, from Silhampton Castle, y’know. But this is mine — look — a Louis XV commode. I found it in Florence when we were staying with one of my wife’s cousins.’ He ran his finger lovingly over the decoration, long stems of foliage and dimpled cherubs. ‘And this pair of pot-pourri vases — Chinese craquelée. Beautiful, aren’t they? These Andromaches are both eighteenth-century, but one is probably Leeds earthenware and the other Derby: I’ve taught myself to feel the difference.’

  ‘It’s all very splendid,’ Gate said.

  ‘Oh, I can’t write in an ugly room — or if there is any danger of being interrupted. I won’t have the telephone up here, and they know better than to bring me messages.’ He looked at the old man and smiled sweetly. ‘I warned them that if you rang up they must tell me at once.’

  Gate said abruptly,

  ‘Do you remember the very old mooring-posts on the pier?’

  ‘The —? Oh, yes?’

  ‘The town council is going to remove them.’

  ‘Really?’

  Gate forced himself to push past this crushing lack of interest. ‘It seems a pity to destroy them. I wondered if you — you used to like them — if you wrote and protested — they might pay some attention to you. Your name…’

  ‘Do you think such things matter? They must be quite rotten.’

  ‘They’re oak, and absolutely sound.’

  Gregory did not trouble to answer, and the old man had a humble sense of his folly. Why should this rich sophisticated man take an interest in objects sunk in an undistinguished past, as worthless to him now as broken fragments of a shell dropped on the sands by a child? His indifference was only too natural. Danesacre, for him, was dead. A cast shrivelled skin. The Gregory Mott of those years was dead. I’m making a terrible ass of myself, he thought. He said again, ‘I must go. It’s late.’ Much too late.

  Gregory made no attempt to keep him. In the hall he drew Gate’s attention to a magnificent crystal globe, swinging in an ebony hoop and reflecting the light falling on it from an immense chandelier. He touched it, tracing the outline of a continent, with the same caressing finger he had laid on his precious Louis XV piece. ‘This always reminds me of… on a summer evening looking at the sea from the east cliff, the smoothness and silky light… the thin line of the coast turning north, as sharp as an engraving on glass.’

  ‘Then you do sometimes think about Danesacre?’

  The smile crossing Gregory’s pale eyes wavered like a reflection in water. ‘If I came back meaning to look at that light, on that sea, I shouldn’t be able to see it.’

  My dear dear child, Gate thought. My dear son. ‘I’m glad you have this house,’ he said impulsively, ’and splendid friends. You’ve done splendidly. A wonderful life.’

  ‘No, I haven’t disgraced you,’ Gregory said, smiling. ‘And in spite of starting at the very bottom.’

  ‘Your father. Your poverty.’

  ‘Oh, not that. I was thinking, you know, of Sheffield. Even Lambert is able to say… even he had Oxford…’

  ‘But you have your degree,’ Gate said. He had not understood.

  Gregory had been speaking carelessly. Now, suddenly, he could not control his voice. His face twisted with anger. ‘A provincial university.’

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ Gate said, with difficulty. ‘Then you weren’t pleased? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Oh —’ he had recovered himself, and spoke in a perfunctory tone, with the least hint of a sneer — ’there were things about it.’

  There was a long glass facing Gate: in its grey heart a short thin old fellow in a squalidly grubby suit of clothes stared back at him. He thought: What has my life meant?

  Gregory parted from him with every mark of affection and kindness. ‘We’ll see each other again. We must. My secretary will telephone to you.’

  He closed the door, and Gate shambled as quickly as he could away from the house towards the street, zigzagging to avoid people he only saw when they were right on him. I mustn’t go there again, he was thinking. Never again.

  He had a nightmarish feeling of nakedness and loss, as though he were alone in the brilliantly-lit street, stripped, between the traffic and buildings that looked solid but would not support him if he leaned on them.

  He began to scold himself. But he has been so kind, he thought humbly. He’s so good, and doing a good noble work. It’s been a wonderful evening. His triumph, his security, so very, very gratifying. It’s all splendid. The perfection of it all. And he is perfect. His kindness to a nobody. Yes, perfect.


  He knew how to get back to the hotel. He had only to go on walking down this lighted street between shops for a long time, then turn left — but before he had gone very far a dark street drew him; he turned down it, sure of finding his way by these empty side-streets, even if it took longer. He was beginning to stumble a little with fatigue. I shall go home tomorrow, he thought lucidly. The early morning train…. A woman in a tight dress, with a fur round her shoulders, edged away from the wall and spoke to him, barring his way along the narrow pavement. Stepping into the road to pass her, he took his hat off and murmured civilly,

  ‘Good night.’

  She bent to peer into his face. ‘What’s wrong, dad?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’

  ‘Then why are you blubbering?’

  He put his hand to his face, and to his astonishment found it wet, tears streaming down it. He hesitated, made a confused gesture, and went on. The woman watched him stumble away, crying, still gesturing, until he was out of sight in the dark street.

  Part 2

  The Monument

  September–December 31, 1956

  Chapter One

  Alone with her husband after her brother and Pulmer had gone, Beatrice said, ‘Do you think your old friend enjoyed himself? I liked him. He’s almost a tramp, but touching, sincere, a little sad.’

  ‘Oh, of course he enjoyed himself. Why not? He had a good dinner. And he was able to see for himself that I’ve really done something. That’s what he wanted to see. I’m sure he wasn’t disappointed.’

  ‘Tell me one thing. How on earth was he able to help you with money? He looks such a scarecrow.’

  ‘Oh, I think he has a little money of his own,’ her husband said casually. ‘Yes, of course he has. He must have, he couldn’t have lived otherwise. Not much but, added to his salary, enough.’

  ‘Do you know that he has?’

  ‘No. But it’s obvious. Or would be, if you knew what that rascal of a Liggett paid him. I don’t mean he’s not poor. He is. But I can’t help wishing that he would go the length of buying a decent suit; his clothes are deplorable: he’s almost more unpleasant than pitiable. Pitiable, too, though, with that face — like an old woman, or an old poorly-paid priest.’