Spring Manoeuvres Read online

  “You’ve had a pleasant evening?” Douglas asked.

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “We met your son in the American club. He bought us drinks and we got talking. He’d been to see a girl called Yvonne, but that …”

  “That was only because I owed her money!” Larry seemed delighted to be able to admit it. “I borrowed a fiver from her last week for a taxi.”

  “Everyone owes Yvonne money,” Robert said. “Even I do.”

  “Even you do?” Ruth said, laying a hand on his knee. “How come?”

  “How come? Because she’s loaded.”

  All three laughed, Larry then adding that as well as being loaded, Yvonne was a major-general’s daughter, always at a loose end.

  Douglas hadn’t been able to imagine what Larry did when he went out. He never said, didn’t even drop hints, and Douglas never asked. If the main reason for this was a wish not to seem nosey, there was another one: he dreaded to discover that his son’s social life was on the desperate side. But now, calm and clear-sighted after his hours with Gemini, this was precisely how it struck him. The club, the casual debts, the drinking, the unnecessary taxi rides. Above all, this couple, Robert and Ruth, Larry so obviously interested in Ruth, Ruth, equally obviously, with no interest in him at all. When he handed her a glass of wine, for instance, he did so pointedly, lingeringly, as if the moment had unusual significance and he was just waiting for her to see it. Back in his chair, he seemed to investigate the boniness of his head, as if suspecting it might be more of a drawback than he had thought. Ruth busied herself with her hair. Holding up her left hand with all fingers spread, she plunged it into her curls, at first as if to scratch her scalp merely, then as if to rearrange her hair in some way, finally however drawing out single hairs and playing with them, teasing them out between thumb and forefinger. While doing so, her gaze went blank – a kind of narcissistic trance, Douglas thought. He felt sorry for his son, trying so hard to impress the young lady with witticisms. The trouble was, they weren’t witticisms. Calmly then, the mood in which he had left the telescope undisturbed even by Larry’s embarrassing awkwardness – the young people seen as from a distance indeed – Douglas decided to intervene. He turned to Robert, his manner alert, decisive.

  “And how d’you find Scotland?”

  “Well, sir, each time I write home I say it’s the most beautiful country in the world. That about sums up my feelings.”

  “But what about us, the Scots? We mustn’t be confused with the landscape.”

  “Absolutely worthy of the landscape, sir.”

  Now that Robert was talking, Ruth was paying attention, hands out of her hair and in her lap, folded there.

  “In spite of a certain resistance to your presence here, you find us so?”

  “Certainly, sir. You’re not guilty of letting politics get in the way of hospitality.”

  “For some of us, I’d like to say, your presence is desirable,” Ruth said.

  “Are you speaking personally or politically?” Douglas asked.

  “Both actually,” Ruth said, smiling.

  “My point is, sir, that whether people want our bases or not, they’re invariably pleasant to us.”

  “But should they be?” Douglas asked, beginning to feel that Robert’s words were prepared ones, learned from some kind of handbook for naval officers. “Is it a virtue on our part?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I mean, should we be invariably pleasant to you?” He smiled as he asked it.

  “I don’t think that’s for me to say, sir.”

  “Why not? It’s a simple question about morals.”

  “Morals? Oh I see …”

  Douglas had noted before that officers in the armed forces addressed you as if they were standing to attention. He wondered if Robert’s extreme pleasantness, democratic manners, were part of an attempt to bring him to attention too. Respect before the flag. Duty. He shifted in his seat, leant forwards.

  “I can hardly believe you’ve met with no unpleasantness,” he said. “No jibes at all?”

  “None that I can recall, sir, I assure you.”

  “Surely we’re not that gutless,” Larry said. “If we are, if we’re really as accepting as you say, then we deserve to be overrun.”

  “You’d rather not have our American friends here?” Ruth looked directly at Larry.

  “That’s right. It’s too complicated, and it’s dangerous.”

  “It’s unnecessary also,” Douglas added. “Though of course there’s a difference between you as a human being, Robert, and you as a representative of a nation with a particular political position.”

  “Thank you, sir, and that’s just what I’ve been alluding to. You Scots do us the courtesy of looking behind the uniform and welcoming us as human beings.”

  “What I’d like to know,” Larry asked, “is whether you too look behind the uniform, see yourself as a human being who happens to be a navy man or just as a navy man?”

  Smiling, crew-cut, Robert scanned the ceiling before replying.

  “I’m a navy man first, I’d say. That’s how I think of myself anyway. I’ve signed on for a long term and I don’t think I’d have done that if I didn’t find great meaning in the job.”

  Ruth turned to him.

  “I’ve not heard you say that sort of thing before.”

  “You’ve not asked me.” Robert was smiling brightly. “For all you care, I might be a fireman or a policeman.”

  “That’s not fair and you know it!”

  “You mean,” Larry interrupted, “that the fact that he’s a naval officer is part of his attraction?”

  “Do I really have to answer that?”

  “Why not?” Larry pressed.

  “All I can say,” she responded pertly, putting on an American accent, “is that I don’t think I can trust a man who can’t distinguish himself from his job.”

  A silence fell. Ruth looked slightly hurt, Larry vaguely expectant, and Robert was still smiling. They all then looked to Douglas.

  “And who are you, Ruth?” he asked.

  She clasped the knee of her right leg, rocking slightly before replying, “That’s some question!”

  “Maybe, but isn’t it preferable to the usual one – what do you do?”

  “I suppose so.”

  His mood of calm was going, Douglas knew. He hoped he would be able to turn the conversation in a more agreeable direction. Then he would go to bed. What happened after that was not his responsibility. He realised he didn’t find either of the visitors particularly engaging. He wondered what Larry saw in them. If the occasion arose, he would ask him, he would offer his impressions and compare them with his son’s. It might be a way of helping him to be more discriminating. Again it struck him that idle curiosity was one of Larry’s worst vices. Essential to purge him of it. Essential.

  “It’s six hours on and six hours off when we’re at sea,” Robert said suddenly, “right through the twenty-four hours, day after day, weekends not excepted. You’ve got to be very adaptable, to be able to go with little sleep. Some find it very hard.”

  “And who asked you?” Ruth said. “It was I who was about to account for myself.”

  “On you go then.”

  “Full steam ahead,” Larry said.

  “Actually I don’t do anything,” Ruth said in an irritated voice. “I’m rather like Yvonne, I suppose, only I’m not loaded. In October I’m going to St Andrews University to study English and Politics, but until then I’m staying at home.”

  “Home is with your parents?” Douglas asked.

  “Yes,” she said briskly, as if some criticism might have been intended. “Daddy’s chairman of Fairfax and Jackson.”

  Douglas had seen vans and lorries from Fairfax and Jackson in the neighbourhood. They were bright blue, with the name, Fairfax and Jackson, in bright red. As far as he could remember, they were naval architects or naval engineers – something like that. The vans and lorries always looked very new, as
though out on their first trip that day. Once, hurrying home to Edith, he had gone into a ditch to avoid one. The driver had been very courteous, winding down his window to ask if Douglas was all right, then jumping down to help, his uniform bright blue like the van, the name, Fairfax and Jackson, bright red on his lapels.

  “I see,” Douglas said, wondering why the fact that Ruth’s father was the chairman of Fairfax and Jackson had emptied him of all desire to question her further. Was it the fact itself, or how she had presented it, girlishly offhand, or something else?

  “Would you like to see father’s observatory, Ruth?” Larry asked. “You mentioned you had an interest in the stars.”

  “I believe they have a great influence on us,” she said.

  “I’m an astronomer,” Douglas responded, “not an astrologer.”

  “Even so, I’d really appreciate it if you could …”

  “You must excuse me, I’m afraid. I’ve just come down from three hours up there. Anyway, there’s not that much to see.”

  “Robert?” Larry asked.

  “No thanks. But don’t let me stop the two of you.”

  Ruth was on her feet, suddenly eager.

  “I suppose, if you’re interested in the ocean depths, you’re unlikely to be interested in the stars also,” she said.

  Robert said nothing.

  A wind had got up. When Larry and Ruth went outside, there was a rush of air in the hall. The coat stand was blown against the wall, papers and magazines on a low table agitated, pictures shaken where they hung. Then, the front door closing, it was still again.

  As far as Douglas knew, Larry had never looked through a telescope seriously. He had allowed him to take it up with him because otherwise the trip would have been pointless. First he would have to set it up, then focus it, then find a part of the heavens to concentrate on. He pictured him, awkwardly gallant, inviting Ruth to have the first look, standing behind her in the darkness of the hut, not knowing what to say either about the stars or the occasion. He suspected that unless something interested her immediately, Ruth would turn away, complaining of the cold, the night, the vastnesses of space. They would be back quickly, quarter of an hour or so, entering the cottage in another burst of wind maybe, lights swaying, curtains billowing, pictures shaken. Meanwhile he would have to make what he could of the imperturbable submariner. Then bed.

  “It’s not as if I don’t have my responsibilities and attachments,” Robert began suddenly, as if he had been waiting to be alone with Douglas, older man and confidant, all evening. “I do, I certainly do. There are my parents and my three sisters, fine people all of them. My father has an engineering business and one of my sisters works with him there. My other two sisters are married, both pregnant actually. My father had hopes I might become an engineer too, but no one supported me more when I decided to join the navy.”

  Again Douglas had the sense of a prepared speech. Perhaps any older man would have been subjected to it.

  “And I have a girl. Her name is Angie. A childhood sweetheart.”

  “Have you told her about Ruth, or Ruth about her?” Douglas was conscious of a wish to unsettle Robert.

  “Well, sir, that’s an astute question, but since I’ve not compromised myself with Ruthie, I’ve not felt an obligation to tell either about the other.”

  “Either about the other …”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Either about the other: it just sounds strange.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does.”

  “But if you were to compromise yourself, as you put it, with Ruth …”

  “Then certainly I’d come clean. Oh certainly.”

  “More men have two women than you might think.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for that, sir.”

  Looking at Robert’s unusually bright eyes and noting how they always seemed to be taken up with something just behind you, Douglas wondered if he might be on drugs. His impeccable manners and scrupulous kind of conversation then seemed possible further symptoms, overcompensations for a tendency to drift into vagueness. He had heard that drugs were a problem on submarines, the real social cement, officers and ratings at one in their dependence, none of it admitted though. He tried to catch Robert’s eye and hold it, but failed. What he thought was that the eyes were brighter than one would expect in such a face. They glistened or glittered, as in anticipation of some saving disclosure, nervous in case it should not happen, desperate for it. Nothing in the present seemed truly honoured.

  “I write to Angie every week and she writes to me. I have some hopes that she’ll be able to come over later this year. I’d like to take her on a tour of the highlands. I hear the landscape is historic up there.”

  “Pre-historic …”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re certainly worth a visit. Several visits.”

  “Perhaps, before we go, you’d be willing to suggest an itinerary or two?”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  In the silence which followed Douglas became relaxed again. He didn’t want to talk or listen any more. He breathed evenly, felt his pulse slow, felt Robert recede. Was this how it was for Edith in meditation?

  Then Larry and Ruth returned; they had been away for about forty minutes. There was a quietness between them which Douglas was willing to see as contentment rather than disaffection. Even to the ignorant eye, he knew, the heavens could be calming.

  Later, he woke to hear Larry bidding his guests goodbye, but he couldn’t tell from the tone or pitch of his voice how the evening had ended.

  Edith’s Journal – 3

  Larry has been mixing with Americans. Because of this girl, Ruth. Douglas told me about her. Perhaps he fancies her himself, he was so vague. He couldn’t give me a clear picture. As if – if he did – I’d be jealous – her youth, looks, figure etc. But really, I’m beyond all that; not a competitor any more. What he did say was that Larry was making a play for her, not an entirely unsuccessful one, either. I’d be so glad to have him know some happiness. It would push back the failures a bit, the pain …

  Anyway, because he’s been meeting Americans, we know that they’re nervous about the marches. That surprised me. I’d have thought that by now marches would have held no terrors for them. After so many years. I remember the early ones. I could walk then. I really thought that something would come of it; it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that the establishment feared us. But it’s different now. There’s no passion in it: people march piously, automatically, and that’s useless, isn’t it?

  I couldn’t stand to be pushed on a march, not even by Douglas and Larry. You’d think there must be another way. What with all this pain, I could become a bomb: I sometimes think it. But pain is useless; so far as I can see, it serves no purposes at all. On the contrary, it muddies me at the centre and at the edges. Better not read this over in case I score it out. Dip the pen in my pain and keep on. What else?

  What happens in crowds is that I lose all sense of the person pushing me. It doesn’t happen otherwise; I always know it’s Larry or Douglas there. It would be like this on a march: it could be anyone pushing me. What’s worse, I could be anyone being pushed! By the end of the march I’d not care about anything because the me who does the caring wouldn’t be there to care. A body pushing a body – that’s all. Anything more pointless I can’t imagine. One should engage in protests with all one’s wits about one. Hot with enlightened rage. I couldn’t even rely on my pain to sustain me because, being part of me, it goes when I go. (Sometimes I think we stand or fall together, my pain and I.) Other wheelchair cases say similar things, unless they’re very stupid. Too long pushed in a crowd and you become nothing. One I spoke to even contrived to fall from his chair under such circumstances: it was like pulling the communication cord, he said.

  All said and done, therefore, I’ll not be on the Easter march. I’ll either do nothing or something out of the ordinary. But what can cripples do that is out of the ordinary? I could try med
itation, I suppose, but that’s the least public of acts, and there are times when something very public is called for. I could start screaming, as I was told another cripple once did in a railway station. She’d never done it before, and never did it again (her husband saw to that). But it was effective; the train waited for her for twenty minutes. But nobody would know what I was screaming at. Nobody would give me credit for using my old lungs for political purposes. I’d be dismissed as crazy, distracted by pain, brain damaged.

  So whatever I do, it must be clear why I’m doing it. Its significance must be plain. I’ll turn to the past, I think, busy myself with protests through the ages. A comforting thought. An inspiring one, actually. Redeemed by earlier times. I often think, you see, that we’ve become becalmed in this crazy present of ours, that we can only be liberated by the past. It’s as if the hands of various ages are constantly held out to us … How true what they say: it takes a crisis for you to know your friends, even if they’re all dead. Winstanley, Bunyan, Danton …

  I think that whatever I do, it must be a surprise, especially to my family. Oh certainly it must be a surprise. Otherwise they may try to talk me out of it, and that would be bad, for I’ll need all my energy. Anyway, they do say, don’t they, that true protest is solitary, hatched in the darkness but then shedding light?

  VI

  One day in late February Helen sent word that Barnie had died in his sleep. “While resting” was her actual phrase. She would contact Douglas after the funeral, she said.

  This meant, Douglas knew, that after a decent interval she would begin to look for a cottage along the coast. It was her plan. It meant, too, that the next stage, Edith’s death and Helen’s coming to live with him had moved closer. The thought neither heartened nor disheartened him. It was a happening too closely shadowed by the deaths of their partners to be clearly imagined, if imagined at all. He had no particular feelings about it, which at times was embarrassing. How judge if you should do something if you felt little? He tried to tell himself that it would happen if it was meant to happen, but because he didn’t really know what this meant, it didn’t help.