“I say,” said Lathom, suddenly. “Do come, old man. I wish you would.
It’s all right there, you know, but I do get a bit bored at times. I’d
like to have a yap with somebody who talks my language.”
“If you’re fed up,” I said reasonably, “why do you stay?”
“Oh, well—I promised I would, don’t you see. It’s not bad really, but
it would do us both good to have a bit of a change.”
“Now, look here, Lathom,” said I, “I don’t like the idea particularly.
I’m not particularly puritan” (I don’t know why one uses that phrase—I
suppose it is easier to disown one’s decencies when one represents them
as something grotesque in a black suit and steeple-hat), “but
considering the way you behaved to Harrison, I think it’s rather thick
to go and push your friends on to him. What you do is your own business”
(looking back on it, I seem to have extracted a great deal of
satisfaction from this original thought), “but it’s rather different for
me.”
“Punk!” said Lathom. “That’s all absolutely over. Finished. Washed out.
It’s you who keep on digging it up again. Can’t you forget it and come
down and help me out with old Harrison?”
“Why so keen?”
“Oh, I’m not particularly keen. I thought you’d like it, that’s all. It
doesn’t matter. What are you doing this afternoon? B.M. again?”
I said, no; I avoided the Reading Room on Saturday afternoons, because
it was so crowded, and asked him about his work.
He talked about it a little, in the same vague way as before, saying how
difficult it was to settle to anything, and displaying some irritability
with his sitters of the moment. His triumph at the Academy had made him
fashionable, and fashionable women were all alike, it seemed;
small-minded and featureless. One might as well paint masks. All of
which I had heard so often from other painters that I put Lathom down as
already spoilt.
I suggested that he should stay up in town and do a show with me, but he
said he was fed up with shows. He had only come up to see his agent, and
was catching the 4.30. Why didn’t I change my mind and come with him?
It ended in my changing my mind, and going. I hardly know why, except
that I was only six months married and my wife was away, which, to the
well-balanced mind, is no good reason for idle behaviour.
The express ran us down in smooth, stuffy comfort, and reached Newton
Abbot dead on time at 9.15. I cannot say—though I have tried—that I
remembered any particular incident on the way down. I hate talking on
railway journeys, anyway, and Lathom did not seem very conversational. I
read—it was Hughes’ _High Wind in Jamaica_—an over-rated book, I
think, considered as a whole, but memorable for that strange and
convincing description of the earthquake. The thick heat and silence,
and then the quick, noiseless shift of sea and shore, like the tilting
of a saucer. Good, that. And the ghastly wind afterwards. And the child,
not realising that anything out of the way had happened, because nobody
gave the thing its proper terrifying name. That is very natural. I do
not care for the part about the pirates. It is an anti-climax.
I know we dined on the train, but railway meals are seldom memorable.
Lathom grumbled, and left his portion half-eaten, and I said something
about his acquiring a taste for hedgehog-broth and stewed
toadstools—some silly remark which he took as a deadly insult.
At Newton Abbot we changed into the local, and dawdled through
Teigngrace, Heathfield and Brimley Halt, taking over half an hour about
it, till we were turned out, twenty minutes late, on the platform at
Bovey Tracey. It was a quarter-past ten and dark, but the smell of the
earth came up pleasantly, with a welcome suggestion of rain in the air.
I stood on the platform, clutching an attaché case in one hand and the
bag with the beef and sausages in the other, while Lathom transacted
some occult business with a man outside. Then he came back, saying
briefly, “I’ve got a man to take us,” and we stumbled out to where an
aged taxi thrummed mournfully in the gloom. Lathom bundled in, and I
parked my bags at his feet.
“What the devil’s that?” he said crossly.
“The grub, fathead,” said I, following him in.
“Oh, yes, of course, I’d forgotten,” he said. “Come on, let’s get going,
for God’s sake!”
Being used to Lathom, I ignored his irritability. We jolted off.
The taxi had a churchyard smell about it, and I mentioned the fact.
Lathom slammed the window down with an impatient grunt. I remarked,
foolishly, that he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the trip. He
said:
“Oh, don’t talk so much.”
It seemed to me that the prospect of seeing Harrison again had rather
got on his nerves, and I looked forward to an exasperating week-end.
“_Vous l’avez voulu_, Georges Dandin,” I reflected, and lit a cigarette
resignedly. The narrow road heaved and sank between the dark hedges, but
climbed on the whole, wriggling determinedly up and round to the ridge.
A dim light or so and a cluster of black roofs announced civilisation,
and Lathom roused himself to say: “Manaton—there’s a good view from
here by daylight.”
“We shan’t be long now, then, I suppose,” said I.
He did not reply, and I suddenly became aware that I could hear him
breathing. Once I had noticed it, I couldn’t seem to shut my ears to the
sound. It was like hearing your own heartbeats in the night—when they
seem to grow louder and louder, till they fill the silence and keep you
from going to sleep. The breaths seemed quite to rasp my ear, they were
so heavy and so close.
“Eh!” said Lathom, unexpectedly. “What did you say?”
What had I said? It must have been ages ago, for Manaton was well behind
us now, and the car was nosing her broken-winded way steadily down and
down, with deep cart-ruts wringing her aged bones. I recollected that I
had said I supposed we shouldn’t be long now.
“Oh, no,” said Lathom. “We’re nearly there.”
We bounced on in silence for ten minutes more; then creaked to a
standstill. I put my head out. Dim fields, trees and the tinkling of a
distant stream coming remotely up on a puff of south-west wind. No
light. No building.
“Is this it?” I asked, “or has the engine conked?”
“What?” said Lathom, irritably. “Yes, of course this is it. What’s the
matter? Push along—we don’t want to stay here all night.”
I wrestled with the door and edged out, Lathom close at my heels. He
paid the driver, and the car began to move off, lurching on down the
slope to find a place to turn.
“Here!” said I; “have you got the beef?”
“Oh, hell,” said Lathom, “I thought you had it.”
I plunged after the taxi, reclaiming the food, and came back to where
Lathom was standing. His hurry seemed to have left him. He was striking
a match and having a little trouble with it. The car, a hundred yards
off, choked, crashed its gears, burbled, choked again, burbled, choked,
and came thudding up on bottom gear. It passed us, labouring and
bumping, moved up into second, hesitated into top, and its red rear
light vanished, showed, jerking, vanished and span slowly skywards.
“Ready?” said Lathom.
I did not point out that I had been patiently waiting for him to make a
move, but grasped the bags and followed.
“We’ve got a field to cross,” he explained, holding a gate open for me.
We staggered along for a little. Then he stopped and I bumped up against
him.
“Over there,” he said.
I looked, and saw a patch of extra darkness, between the darkness of
some tree-stems.
“There’s no light,” I said. “Is he expecting you? I hope he won’t be
annoyed with me for coming.”
“Oh, he won’t be annoyed,” said Lathom, shortly. “He’s gone to bed, I
expect. Early bird. Up with the lark and down with the sun and all that.
It doesn’t matter. We can forage round for ourselves.”
A few more minutes, and we stood at the door of the shack. You know what
it’s like—indeed, all England knows by now—a low, two-roomed cottage,
ugly, built of stone, with a slate roof. Only one story—what in
Scotland they call a but and ben. The windows were unshuttered, but not
a spark of light showed through them—no candle, not so much as the
embers of a fire.
Lathom gave an ejaculation.
“He must have gone to sleep,” he muttered. I was fumbling for the handle
of the door, but he pushed me aside, and I heard the latch click open.
He paused, staring into the dark interior.
“I wonder if he’s gone wandering off and got lost somewhere,” he said,
hesitating on the threshold.
“Why not go in and see?” I countered.
“I’m going to.” He stepped in and the unmistakable rattle of matches in
the box told me that he was getting a light. He was clumsy about it, and
only after several futile scratches and curses did the small flame flare
up; he held it high, and for a moment I saw the living-room—a kitchen
table cluttered with crockery, a sink, an empty hearth, and a jumble of
painting gear, clumped in a corner. Then the match flickered and burnt
his fingers, and he dropped it, but made no effort to strike another.
“Juggins!” said I, defiantly, for this cheerless welcome was getting on
my nerves. “Here—isn’t there a candle or anything?”
I hunted through my pockets for a petrol lighter. This gave a steadier
light, by which I found and lit a bedroom candle on a bracket just
behind the door. The untidy room leaped into existence again. I set the
candle down on the table, beside the sordid remnants of a meal. A chair
lay overturned on the floor. I righted it mechanically and looked round.
Lathom was still standing just inside the door, with his head cocked
sideways, as though he were listening.
“Well, I’m damned,” said I, “this is very cheerful. If Harrison—”
“Listen a minute,” he said, “I thought I heard him snoring.”