Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

“What is it?”

Gerald Candless didn’t answer. “I’m going away for a few days. I don’t want it left here in the house while I’m away. But I don’t want to destroy it, either. I may publish it one day—I mean, I may finish it and publish it. If I have the nerve.”

“What is it, your autobiography?”

The sarcastic reply came: “Of course. I haven’t even changed the names.” Then he said, “It’s a novel, the start of a novel, or the end—I don’t know which. But he is not he and she is not she and they are not they. Right? I don’t want it left here. You were coming, I’d met you in wherever it was …”

“Hay-on-Wye.”

“Right. You were coming, and it came to me that you’d do. Who else is there down here?”

“I wonder you didn’t put it in a safe-deposit box somewhere.”

“Oh, you wonder that, do you? If you don’t want to take it and look after it for me, just say. I’ll give it to Miss Batty, or I’ll burn it. Come to think of it, burning might be best.”

“For God’s sake, don’t burn it,” said Titus. “I’ll take it. How do I get it back to you? And when do I?”

Gerald picked up the pages and held them in his hands. Underneath them, on the desk, was a padded bag already addressed to Gerald Candless, Lundy View House, Gaunton, North Devon, and stamped with £1.50 postage.

“Do you … Do you want me to … Do you mind if I read it?”

A gale of laughter greeted that, a strong, vigorous bellow, incompatible with those tremulous hands. “You’ll have a job. I’m the world’s lousiest typist. Here, you can put it in this.”

“This” was a cheap-looking plastic briefcase, the kind of thing that, containing the requisite brochures and agenda, is given to delegates at a conference. Titus Romney wouldn’t have been seen dead with it normally. But he had only a short distance to carry it to the hotel. They found Julia in the drawing room, carrying on a stilted conversation with Gerald’s wife. Titus had already forgotten her name, but he didn’t have to remember it, because they were going. It was 3:30 and they were leaving. The daughters had disappeared.

“I’ll walk with you to the hotel,” Gerald said. “I’m supposed to walk a bit every day. A few yards.”

Julia gushed, the way she did when she had had a horrid time. “Goodbye. Thank you so much. It’s been lovely. A lovely lunch.”

“Enjoy the rest of your stay,” Gerald’s wife said.

They set off across the garden, Titus carrying the briefcase, at which Julia cast curious glances. The garden extended to about ten yards from the cliff edge, where there was a gate to the cliff path. From this path, all the beach could be seen, and the car park, full of cars and trailers. The beach was crowded and there were a lot of people in the sea. Somewhere Julia had read this described as the finest beach on the English coast, the longest, seven miles of it, with the best sand. The safest beach, for the tide went out half a mile and flowed in gently over the flat, scarcely sloping sand, a shallow, limpid sea. It was blue as a jewel, calm, waveless.

“You must love living here,” Julia said politely.

He didn’t answer. Titus asked him if he didn’t like walking. The way he talked about it implied he didn’t like it.

“I don’t like any physical exercise. Only cranks like walking. That’s why a sensible man invented the car.”

A gate in the path bore a sign: THE DUNES HOTEL. STRICTLY PRIVATE. HOTEL GUESTS ONLY. Gerald opened it, then stood aside to let Julia pass through. The hotel, Edwardian red brick with white facings, multigabled, stood up above them, its striped awnings unfurled across the terrace. People sat at tables having tea. Children splashed about in a swimming pool that was barely concealed by privet hedges.

“Your children enjoying themselves?”

“We haven’t any children,” said Julia.

“Really? Why not?”

“I don’t know.” She was very taken aback. That should be a question people didn’t ask. “I … I don’t necessarily want any.”

Another gate to pass through and they were on the turf of the big lawn.

“You don’t want any children?” Gerald said. “How unnatural. You must change your mind. Not afraid to have a baby, are you? Some women are. Children are the crown of existence. Children are the source of all happiness. The great reward. Believe me. I know. Here we are, then, back among the throng.”

Julia was so angry, she was nearly rude to him. She looked at her husband, but he refused to meet her eyes. She turned to Gerald Candless, resolved on silently shaking hands with him, turning her back on him, and marching quickly up to her room. Her hand went out reluctantly. He failed to take it, though this omission wasn’t rudeness. He was staring up at the hotel, at the terrace, with an expression of astonishment and, more than that, amazement. His eyes were fixed and so unblinking that she followed his gaze.

Nothing to see, no one to look at, nothing to cause this rigid, fixed stare. It was the elderly people who congregated there on the terrace, she had noticed from the previous afternoon, those who didn’t swim or walk far or venture down the cliff, knowing they would have to climb up again. The old ones sat there under the umbrellas and the blue-and-white-striped awning, golden-wedding couples, grandparents, the sedate, the inactive.

“Have you seen someone you know?” Titus asked.

It was as if he were in a dream, as if he were a sleepwalker arrested in his blind progress and lost, his orientation gone. Titus’s question broke the spell or the dream and he passed a hand across his high wrinkled forehead, pushing the fingers through that bush of hair.

“I was mistaken,” he said; then the hand came down, and farewells were made. He was smiling the way he did, with his red wolfish mouth and not his eyes. His eyes not at all.

They didn’t watch him go back. They didn’t look back or wave. As she crossed the terrace to enter the hotel by way of the open glass doors into the lounge and bar, Julia paused briefly to take in the people who sat at the terrace tables, those grandparents. Old people smoked so much. They all sat with cigarettes, overflowing ashtrays, pots of tea and cups of tea, pastries on cake stands, packs of cards, but no sun lotion or sunglasses. They never went into the sun. A woman was making up her face in the mirror of a powder compact, drawing crimson lips onto an old pursed mouth.

There was no one to interest him, no one who could so have caught his rapt gaze. More affectation, she thought, more games to impress us, and she followed Titus into the cool shadowy interior.

Sarah and Hope were going out. Hope had already made her plans, a barbecue on some beach farther up the coast. Almost before the guests were out of earshot, Sarah was on the phone, arranging to meet the usual crowd in a Barnstaple pub. Not even the prospect of their father’s company would keep them in on a Saturday night. To go out with those old companions, school friends and friends’ friends, was an obligation, almost a duty.

“ ‘Make my bed and light the light,’ ” said Miss Batty in the kitchen. “ ‘I’ll arrive late tonight, blackbird, bye-bye.’ There’s a lot of truth in those old songs.”

She picked up Titus Romney’s glass off the tray and drank the port he had left. It was something she usually did when they entertained. Once she had gotten into such a state drinking the dregs from fifteen champagne glasses that Ursula had had to drive her home. But what on earth had they had champagne for? Ursula couldn’t remember. Miss Batty—whom Ursula long ago had begun calling Daphne, just as Miss Batty called her Ursula—drained a drop of brandy and began emptying the dishwasher of its first load.