45. _Statement of John Munting_
[Continued.]
The next news I had about the Harrisons was about the middle of October,
1929, when I got a note from Lathom, written, rather unexpectedly, from
“The Shack, Manaton, Devon.” He said that he was staying with Harrison,
who was having his annual “camp” among the water-colour “bits” and the
natural foodstuffs. Harrison, it appeared, had been so pressing that he
really had not known how to refuse, especially as he was really feeling
rather played-out after several months’ strenuous work in Paris. After
the unbearably hot and prolonged summer, the prospect of pottering about
a bit among the lush grass and deep lanes of Devon had seemed
attractive, even when coupled with the boredom of Harrison’s company.
“As a matter of fact,” he added, “the old boy is not so bad when you get
him in the country by himself. This is the kind of life that really
suits him. As a family man he is a failure, but he quite comes out and
blossoms doing the odd bits of work about the shack. And he certainly is
a first-class cook, though up to the present I have successfully avoided
his nettle-broth and stewed toadstools, not wishing to be cut off in my
youth. This is a pretty place—miles away from everywhere, of course,
stuck down on a circumbendible lane which runs down from Manaton (half a
dozen houses and a pub) to the deep valley which separates the Manaton
Ridge and Becky Falls from Lustleigh Cleave. The only neighbours are the
sheep and cows—an old ram walked into the kitchen the other day.
Harrison was grunting over the stove and didn’t see him at first.
‘Be-hey-hey,’ says the ram; ‘Eh-heh-heh,’ bleats Harrison, looking up;
and damn it, he was so exactly like the old fellow that he wanted
nothing but a pair of horns to complete the resemblance! We wash the
crockery, and then Harrison takes his newest superfine painting-box,
with the collapsible legs and all the rest of it, and trundles away into
the valley, where he sits all day in a gorse-bush, trying to put the
tumbling of the stream on paper. The drought has dried it up a good bit,
but never was anything so desiccated as the arid little plan of it he
produces with pride for me to see, painted with a brush with three hairs
in it—peck, peck, scratch and dab—like a canary scrabbling for seed.
Why don’t I take the opportunity to do some work in this glorious place?
No, thanks; I’m a figure and portrait wallah—besides, I’ve come here
for a rest. It is not mine to sing the stately grace—I smoke my pipe in
the doorway, drive the cattle out of the back garden, and see that the
stewpot doesn’t boil too fast.
“So here I am, in comfortable exile with Menelaus, while Helen sits at
home and sews shirts. And it’s a better way, too. One mustn’t take these
things too seriously. Damned if Harrison hasn’t got the right idea after
all. Look after the grub and leave women to their own fool devices. They
give a man no peace. You, being married, have perhaps got your house in
order. Do you find it as easy to do your work, now that you’re hooked up
to a whirlwind? But, of course, your whirlwind works too, and helps to
turn the mill-wheel, which no doubt makes all the difference.”
Lathom went on in this strain for a page or so. Cynicism from him was
something new, and I took it to spell restlessness of some sort or
other. Either, I thought, he was getting fed up with the lady’s
exactions, or the trio had arrived at a _modus vivendi_. It was no
affair of mine.
He ended up by saying that he would be running up to town in a day or
two and would look me up. I was then living in Bloomsbury—in fact, in
my present house—and my wife was away with her people. I had arranged
to go with her, but at the last moment an urgent matter turned up—an
Introduction to an anthology, which had to be rushed out in a great
hurry before some other publisher get hold of the idea, and I had to
stay behind to get the thing fairly going, as it meant a good deal of
work at the British Museum.
When Lathom turned up at about one o’clock on the 19th, I explained this
to him and apologised for having no lunch to offer him. Like most men,
and women, too, when left to themselves, I found solitary meals
uninspiring. So, apparently, did “the girl,” whom, till my wife left me,
I had imagined to be a good cook. Not that I had ever expected Elizabeth
to leave her writing to see after my meals, so I can only suppose that
her moral influence was enough to make the difference between roast
mutton and raw.
Lathom commiserated me, and we went and had some grub at the “Bon
Bourgeois.” He seemed to be in high spirits, when he thought about it,
but had a way of going off into fits of abstraction which suggested
nerves or preoccupation of some kind. He asked about the anthology and
my work generally with apparent interest, and then, to my surprise,
broke suddenly into my description of the plot of my new novel by
saying:
“Look here, if the wife’s away, why don’t you come down to the Shack
with me for the week-end? It’ll do you good, freshen you up and all
that.”
“Good heavens,” I said, “it’s Harrison’s place. He won’t want me.”
“Oh yes, he’d love to have you. Oh, rather. In fact, he only said to me
yesterday, when I was starting off, he wished I could bring you back
with me. He’s quite forgotten all that misunderstanding. He’s rather
distressed about it, really. Thinks he did you an injustice. Would like
to make it up. He says you must be harbouring resentment, because you’ve
been in town all this time and haven’t been to see them.”
“That’s nonsense,” I said. “_You_ know why I’ve thought it best to keep
out of it.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t. Naturally he thinks you’re offended.”
“Didn’t you tell him I was busy?”
“Of course. Oh, yes. Played up the popular literary man for all it was
worth. So he said, of course you were too important nowadays to remember
your old friends.”
“Damn it,” I said, “what a tactless devil you are, Lathom. You needn’t
have hurt his feelings.”
“No, but look here. Why not come down? It’ll please the old boy no end,
and as neither of the women will be there, there won’t be any
awkwardness. It’s a damned good opportunity for being civil to him
without involving your wife.”
“Civil is a good word for it,” I objected. “I don’t know that it’s
particularly civil to plant myself on the man like that, and make him
feed me and so on, without notice, when he probably doesn’t want me.
Just at the week-end, too, when it’s difficult to get extra supplies.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Lathom, “we’ll take some grub down with
us. I was going to in any case. Everything has to be brought out there
by a carrier twice a week. Frightful desolate hole. We’ll take a bit of
beef and a couple of pounds of sausages. That’ll see us through all
right.”