Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

One other thing he had been slightly concerned about was how Gerald would get along with Havelock. Of course there would only be the school holidays to present any problem, and even these would not be spent entirely at the house; nevertheless there was just the doubt in his mind that always existed in any human affairs connected even remotely with his father. But again to Charles’s relief, everything happened as he could have wished—indeed, more so, for Havelock captivated the boy to a degree that almost presented a problem of its own. Charles could take sardonic comfort from thinking how like Havelock it was to show that as a grandfather he could succeed where Charles as a father seemed to have failed. But at any rate, Charles had to admit it eased the transition from American to English life by giving Gerald a personal excitement.

Though still clear in mind, Havelock was weakening physically, and there came a time when he could put words on paper with less trouble than he could speak. This meant that one of his favourite pastimes was still available, and Charles often found him busy with the anthologies, composing new parodies of chosen poems. Some of his efforts were obscene or scatological in an earlier manner, but an increasing number were respectable, and a few were rather charming. On a September evening soon after Gerald had gone to school Charles came home late from a meeting and found Havelock bent sleepily over some pencilled pages. One, to his surprise, was in Gerald’s handwriting—it was a poem the boy had learned at school in America—Joyce Kilmer’s ‘Trees’. Apparently he had told his grandfather about this and had obligingly copied it out for him, and now Havelock had been at work on it. Charles would not have disturbed him for conversation but the old man opened his eyes and pointed to his effort. ‘Just imagine,’ he muttered, slurring over the words with difficulty, ‘they made him learn it by heart over there. It’s not a bad poem, but it’s not as good as all that… Now read what I’ve made of it.’

Charles read:

I think however well you know ‘em Trees aren’t as lovely as a poem; No majesty of palm or pine Can rival Shakespeare’s mighty line, Or grandeur of the sylvan glade Equal the spell that Wordsworth laid; Nor even in the Yosemite Where tops of trees are out of sight Can you find fairer things or finer Than in the verse of Heinrich Heine: Trees have been here since earth began, But poems only came with man.

‘Very pretty,’ Charles commented, and might have left it at that had he thought twice. But it had been so long his habit to deflate Havelock gently whenever the occasion offered that even now he could not forbear to add: ‘I’m afraid trees haven’t been here since earth began, but they came earlier than mankind, so perhaps your point holds. Another flaw is that the last word of your seventh line isn’t pronounced “Yosemite” to rhyme with “sight”, but “Yosemmity”, with the accent on the “sem”.’

Havelock looked considerably put out. ‘Oh? How do YOU know?’

‘I’ve been there.’ (He and Jane, en route to South America, had once travelled from New York to San Francisco and visited Yosemite on the way.)

‘You have, eh? You’ve really been all over the place, haven’t you?’ Havelock went on, with a touch of irritation: ‘So it’s Yosemmity? Well, we’ll just have to change lines seven and eight, that’s all. But not now— I’m too tired… You might give it a thought yourself, Charles, if you have time—you’re a clever fellow… I want to send it to Gerald with my Sunday letter.’

Havelock was already half-dozing and Cobb waiting to put him to bed. Charles said goodnight and went to bed himself. An hour later, while he was reading a detective story, an alternative couplet occurred to him:

Nor even in remote Yosemite Where trees uprise to an extremity…

He didn’t think much of this, but as there seemed no possible rhyme except ‘extremity’ it might well be as good as could be got. On the kind of impulse to please his father which came most often when they were not together, he tiptoed into the adjacent room, found him already asleep, and also the pencilled poem on the table beside his bed. Charles inserted the change, then went back to his own bed. But now he was wide awake himself, and vagrantly, with the theme of trees still on his mind, he thought of the trees so far from Yosemite and so much smaller, the little trees in Linstead, all planted by hand, the trees in Ladysmith Road that Mr. Mansfield had chosen, loved, and watched as they grew, and Mr. Mansfield himself, who would doubtless, given a choice of poems as well as trees, have preferred Joyce Kilmer’s idea to Havelock’s… Oh, the laburnum trees… He could not sleep for thinking of them, and of faces under their yellow blooms, and of the days and nights of his youth…

In the morning Havelock was weaker and stayed in bed, but he had already seen the new lines and approved them, ‘That’s fine, Charles, that really does the trick. Now I can send it off to Gerald… Thank you, Charles. Thank you very much.’ His eyes began to moisten, but this happened frequently now, with or without an emotion. ‘Thank you, Charles,’ he said again. ‘You’re not only a clever fellow, you’re a GOOD fellow.’

It was not quite the last conversation they had, but it was the last of the parodies, and Havelock’s letter to Gerald enclosing it was the last of his letters to anybody. He did not get up again, and after falling asleep as usual one November night he was found by Cobb in the morning, half smiling in death, with no signs of distress or of a final struggle. ‘One of the things you rarely see,’ the doctor commented.

Charles visited Gerald at school to tell him what had happened, and the boy burst into tears with more display of feeling than Charles had yet observed in him—and much more (from what Aunt Birdie had said) than when he had learned about his mother. Perhaps it was because he was now older and the loss was more recent. Or perhaps, Charles had to admit, Gerald had been Havelock’s last conquest—the last and by all odds the most innocent. Proudly the boy showed his father the poem and the letter—a really delightful letter, warm and lively and humorous. It also contained a postscript to which Gerald naturally paid attention—a promise to give the boy ‘the gold watch that the Shah of Persia gave me’.

Neither Charles nor Cobb had ever heard of such a thing, but when Havelock’s safe deposit box was opened, there it was, gaudy but undoubtedly gold—‘presented to Havelock Anderson—September 10th, 1910’. Charles was still curious, and after some research discovered that Havelock had successfully represented the Shah in a claim against a London insurance company for jewels stolen from a Biarritz hotel.

Besides the watch the deposit box yielded other discoveries, including the most varied collection of worthless stock and share certificates Charles had ever seen. He had long known that his father dabbled in the market, but he had always assumed the existence of a solid preponderance of sound investments. Now it became apparent that Havelock had lacked financial judgment as he had lacked many other kinds; but what dreams he must have had, Charles reflected, riffling through the scrip of long-defunct enterprises concerned with everything from no-sag spring mattresses to unbreakable gramophone records! Even the cash obtained from the sale of Beeching had been thrown away in Japanese bonds on the gamble that Japan would stay out of the war. (And yet, Charles remembered, it was Havelock who had had the premonition that Beeching would one day burn to the ground, and earlier still, just after the First World War, it was Havelock who had scouted Charles’s easy assumption of a lifetime of peace… Perhaps Blainey’s verdict applied as well, or at least as charitably, as any: all his life Havelock had been a rum fellow.)