Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

Leaning forward in his armchair, his feet planted far apart, his back to the light, Gerald opened the scissors so that they formed a cross. He smiled. He was a big man, with a head journalists called “leonine,” though the lion was old now, with a grizzled, curly mane the color of iron filings. His hands were big and his fingers very long. He handed the scissors to Julia Romney and said, “I pass the scissors uncrossed.”

Julia passed the scissors to Hope as she had received them. “I pass the scissors uncrossed.”

“No, you don’t.” Hope closed the scissors, turned them over, and put them into the outstretched fingers of Titus Romney. “I pass the scissors crossed.”

Titus did the same and handed them to Sarah, saying with a glance at Gerald that he passed the scissors crossed.

“Wrong.” Sarah opened the scissors, held them by one blade, and passed them to her father. “I pass the scissors crossed, Dad.”

He closed them, turned them over twice clockwise, and passed them to Julia. “I pass the scissors uncrossed.”

Dawning comprehension, or what she thought was dawning comprehension, broke on Julia’s face. She sat upright and turned the scissors over twice counterclockwise, handed them to Hope, and said she passed the scissors crossed.

“Well, well,” said Hope. “But do you know why?”

Julia didn’t. She had guessed. “But they’re crossed when they’re closed, aren’t they?”

“Are they? You have to pass them crossed and know why, and everyone has to see. Look, when you know, it’s as clear as glass. I promise you.” Hope opened the scissors. “I pass the scissors crossed.”

So they continued for half an hour. Titus Romney asked if anyone ever got it, and Gerald said yes, of course, it was just that no one ever got it at once. Jonathan Arthur had gotten it the second time. Impressed by the name of the winner of both the John Llewellyn Rhys and the Somerset Maugham prizes, Titus said he was really going to concentrate from now on. Sarah said she wanted another brandy and what about everyone else.

“Another port, Dad?”

“I don’t think so, darling. It gives me a headache. But you can give Titus one.”

Sarah replenished the drinks, then sat down again, this time on the arm of her father’s chair. “I pass the scissors uncrossed.”

“But why?” Julia Romney was beginning to sound irritated. She had gone rather red. Signs of participants beginning to lose their tempers always amused the Candlesses, who now looked gleeful and expectant. “I mean, how can it be? The scissors are just the same as when you passed them crossed just now.”

“I told you it was unlikely you’d get it the first time,” said Hope, and she yawned. “I pass the scissors crossed.”

“You always pass them crossed!”

“Do I? Right, I’ll pass them uncrossed next time.”

As Titus was receiving the scissors, opening them and turning them clockwise, Ursula came in through the French windows. Her hair, which was fair but graying, and very long and wispy, had begun flopping down out of its pins and she was holding it up with one hand. She smiled, and Titus thought she was going to say, “Still at it?” or “Have you found the secret yet?” but she said nothing, only passing on across the room and through the door that led into the hall.

Gerald looked around and said, “Shall we call it a day?”

The way the girls laughed, Sarah leaning over to look into her father’s eyes, told Titus this must be the phrase, rather dramatically delivered, he always used to terminate a session of the Game. Probably the injunction that followed was also requisite at this point.

“Better luck next time.”

Gerald rose to his feet. Titus had the impression, founded on nothing that he was truly aware of, that the old man (the “Grand Old Man,” he almost was) had been disturbed by the return of his wife, deflected from his pleasure in the Game, and was displeased. His face, though not as gray as his hair, had lost its color and grown dull. The daughter, Sarah, the one who looked like her mother, saw it, too. She glanced at her sister, the one who looked like her father, and said, “Are you all right, Dad?”

“Of course I am.” He made a face at his glass but smiled at her. “I don’t like port, never have. I should have had brandy.”

“I’ll get you a brandy,” said Hope.

“Better not.” He did something Titus had never before seen a grown man do to a grown woman: He put out his hand and stroked her hair. “We stumped them again, my sweethearts. We boggled them.”

“We always do.”

“And now”—he turned to Titus—“before you go”—a bright gleam in his dark eye—“you said you wanted to see where I work.”

The study. Did he call it that? The room, anyway, where the books had been written, or most of them. It was stuffy in there and warm. You could see the sea from here, too, and more of the long, flat half-mile-wide beach, the water’s edge almost invisible in the distance. Sky and sea met in a blurred dazzle. The closed window was large, stark, with black blinds rolled up, and the sun poured in. It flooded the desk and his chair and the books behind him and the book in front. Gerald Candless used a typewriter, not a word processor, quite an old-fashioned one, and had a bunch of pens and pencils in an onyx jar.

Proofs of a new novel lay to the left of the typewriter. A stack of manuscript about an inch deep sat to its right. Several thousand books filled the shelves ceiling to floor, dictionaries and thesauruses and encyclopedias and other reference works, and poetry and biography and novels, hundreds of novels, including Gerald Candless’s own works. The sun bathed their leather and cloth and colored-paper spines in brilliant light.

“Do you feel all right?”

Titus had echoed Sarah’s words, because the grayness was back in Gerald’s face and his big gnarled right hand was gripping the upper part of his left arm. He made no answer to the question. Titus thought he was probably the sort of man who never said anything unless he had something to say, made no small talk, answered no polite questions as to his health.

“Are you really called Titus?”

The abrupt inquiry disconcerted him. “What?”

“I didn’t know you were deaf. I said, Are you really called Titus?”

“Of course I am.”

“I thought it must be a pseudonym. Don’t look so peevish. Not all of us are really called what we’re called, you know, not by a long chalk. Now take a look around. Look your fill. Have a book. Help yourself, and I’ll sign it. Not a first edition—I draw the line at that.”

One of the things Titus looked for was a copy of his own book. It wasn’t there, or if it was, he couldn’t see it. He stood in front of the row of Gerald Candlesses, wondering which one to pick, then finally chose Hamadryad.

“Read Finnish, do you?”

Titus saw that he had chosen from the section of translations, so he made a second attempt, but was forestalled by being handed a book club edition of the same novel. Gerald signed it. Just his name, no good wishes or kind regards. Sunlight fell on his hands, which, if they didn’t tremble, weren’t quite steady.

“And now that you’ve had your lunch, seen my room, and gotten a book, you can do something for me. One good turn—or rather, three good turns—deserves another, wouldn’t you agree?”

Assent was expected. Titus nodded. “Anything, of course, if it’s in my power.”

“Oh, it’s in your power. It would be in anybody’s who happened to be here. You see that stuff?”

“The page proofs?”

“No, not the page proofs. The manuscript. I want you to take it with you. Just take it away. Will you do that for me?”