The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold Read online

  The day came towards the end of the summer holidays. Soon after breakfast there arrived a motor-car, and a van of the sort used in the army by the more important kinds of signaler, which immediately absorbed the attention of the younger children. Out of the car there came three youngish men, thin of hair, with horn-rimmed elliptical glasses, cord trousers, and tweed coats; exactly what Mr. Pinfold was expecting. Their leader was named Angel. He emphasized his primacy by means of a neat, thick beard. He and his colleagues, he explained, had slept in the district, where he had an aunt. They would have to leave before luncheon. They would get through their business in the morning. The signalers began rapidly uncoiling wires and setting up their microphone in the library, while Mr. Pinfold drew the attention of Angel and his party to the more noticeable of his collection of works of art. They did not commit themselves to an opinion, merely remarking that the last house they visited had a gouache by Rouault.

  “I didn’t know he ever painted in gouache,” said Mr. Pinfold. “Anyway he’s a dreadful painter.”

  “Ah!” said Angel. “That’s very nice. Very nice indeed. We must try and work that into the broadcast.”

  When the electricians had made their arrangements Mr. Pinfold sat at his table with the three strangers, a microphone in their midst. They were attempting to emulate a series that had been cleverly done in Paris with various French celebrities, in which informal, spontaneous discussion had seduced the objects of inquiry into self-revelation.

  They questioned Mr. Pinfold in turn about his tastes and habits. Angel led and it was at him that Mr. Pinfold looked. The commonplace face above the beard became slightly sinister, the accentless, but insidiously plebeian voice, menacing. The questions were civil enough in form but Mr. Pinfold thought he could detect an underlying malice. Angel seemed to believe that anyone sufficiently eminent to be interviewed by him must have something to hide, must be an impostor whom it was his business to trap and expose, and to direct his questions from some basic, previous knowledge of something discreditable. There was the hint of the underdog’s snarl which Mr. Pinfold recognized from his press cuttings.

  He was well equipped to deal with insolence, real or imagined, and answered succinctly and shrewdly, disconcerting his adversaries, if adversaries they were, point by point. When it was over Mr. Pinfold offered his visitors sherry. Tension relaxed. He asked politely who was their next subject.

  “We’re going on to Stratford,” said Angel, “to interview Cedric Thorne.”

  “You evidently have not seen this morning’s paper,” said Mr. Pinfold.

  “No, we left before it came.”

  “Cedric Thorne has escaped you. He hanged himself yesterday afternoon in his dressing-room.”

  “Good heavens, are you sure?”

  “It’s in The Times.”

  “May I see?”

  Angel was shaken from his professional calm. Mr. Pinfold brought the paper and he read the paragraph with emotion.

  “Yes, yes. That’s him. I half expected this. He was a personal friend. I must get on to his wife. May I phone?”

  Mr. Pinfold apologized for the levity with which he had broken the news and led Angel to the business-room. He refilled the sherry glasses and attempted to appear genial. Angel returned shortly to say: “I couldn’t get through. I’ll have to try again later.”

  Mr. Pinfold repeated his regrets.

  “Yes, it is a terrible thing—not wholly unexpected though.”

  A macabre note had been added to the discords of the morning.

  Then hands were shaken; the vehicles turned on the gravel and drove away.

  When they were out of sight down the turn of the drive, one of the children who had been listening to the conversation in the van said: “You didn’t like those people much, did you, Papa?”

  He had definitely not liked them and they left an unpleasant memory which grew sharper in the weeks before the record was broadcast. He brooded. It seemed to him that an attempt had been made against his privacy and he was not sure how effectively he had defended it. He strained to remember his precise words and his memory supplied various distorted versions. Finally the evening came when the performance was made public. Mr. Pinfold had the cook’s wireless carried into the drawing-room. He and Mrs. Pinfold listened together. His voice came to him strangely old and fruity, but what he said gave him no regret. “They tried to make an ass of me,” he said. “I don’t believe they succeeded.”

  Mr. Pinfold for the time forgot Angel.

  Boredom alone and some stiffness in the joints disturbed that sunny autumn. Despite his age and dangerous trade Mr. Pinfold seemed to himself and to others unusually free of the fashionable agonies of angst.

  Two

  Collapse of Elderly Party

  Mr. Pinfold’s idleness has been remarked. He was half-way through a novel and had stopped work in early summer. The completed chapters had been typed, rewritten, retyped, and lay in a drawer of his desk. He was entirely satisfied with them. He knew in a general way what had to be done to finish the book and he believed he could at any moment set himself to do it. But he was not pressed for money. The sales of his earlier works had already earned him that year the modest sufficiency which the laws of his country allowed. Further effort could only bring him sharply diminishing rewards and he was disinclined to effort. It was as though the characters he had quickened had fallen into a light doze and he left them benevolently to themselves. Hard things were in store for them. Let them sleep while they could. All his life he had worked intermittently. In youth his long periods of leisure had been devoted to amusement. Now he had abandoned that quest. That was the main difference between Mr. Pinfold at fifty and Mr. Pinfold at thirty.

  Winter set in sharp at the end of October. The central-heating plant at Lychpole was ancient and voracious. It had not been used since the days of fuel shortage. With most of the children away at school Mr. and Mrs. Pinfold withdrew into two rooms, heaped the fires with such coal as they could procure, and sheltered from draughts behind screens and sandbags. Mr. Pinfold’s spirits sank, he began to talk of the West Indies and felt the need of longer periods of sleep.

  The composition of his sleeping-draught, as originally prescribed, was largely of water. He suggested to his chemist that it would save trouble to have the essential ingredients in full strength and to dilute them himself. Their taste was bitter and after various experiments he found they were most palatable in crème de menthe. He was not scrupulous in measuring the dose. He splashed into the glass as much as his mood suggested and if he took too little and woke in the small hours he would get out of bed and make unsteadily for the bottles and a second swig. Thus he passed many hours in welcome unconsciousness; but all was not well with him. Whether from too much strong medicine or from some other cause, he felt decidedly seedy by the middle of November. He found himself disagreeably flushed, particularly after drinking his normal, not illiberal, quantity of wine and brandy. Crimson blotches appeared on the backs of his hands.

  He called in Dr. Drake who said: “That sounds like an allergy.”

  “Allergic to what?”

  “Ah, that’s hard to say. Almost anything can cause an allergy nowadays. It might be something you’re wearing or some plant growing near. The only cure really is a change.”

  “I might go abroad after Christmas.”

  “Yes, that’s the best thing you could do. Anyway don’t worry. No one ever died of an allergy. It’s allied to hay-fever,” he added learnedly, “and asthma.”

  Another thing which troubled him and which he soon began to attribute to his medicine was the behavior of his memory. It began to play him tricks. He did not grow forgetful. He remembered everything in clear detail but he remembered it wrong. He would state a fact, dogmatically, sometimes in print—a date, a name, a quotation—find himself challenged, turn to his books for verification and find most disconcertingly that he was at fault.

  Two incidents of this kind slightly alarmed him. With the idea
of cheering him up Mrs. Pinfold invited a week-end party to Lychpole. On the Sunday afternoon he proposed a visit to a remarkable tomb in a neighboring church. He had not been there since the war, but he had a clear image of it, which he described to them in technical detail; a recumbent figure of the mid sixteenth century in gilded bronze; something almost unique in England. They found the place without difficulty; it was unquestionably what they sought; but the figure was of colored alabaster. They laughed, he laughed, but he was shocked.

  The second incident was more humiliating. A friend in London, James Lance, who shared his tastes in furniture, found, and offered him as a present, a most remarkable piece; a wash-hand stand of the greatest elaboration designed by an English architect of the 1860s, a man not universally honored but of magisterial status to Mr. Pinfold and his friends. This massive freak of fancy was decorated with metal work and mosaic, and with a series of panels painted in his hot youth by a rather preposterous artist who later became President of the Royal Academy. It was just such a trophy as Mr. Pinfold most valued. He hurried to London, studied the object with exultation, arranged for its delivery, and impatiently awaited its arrival at Lychpole. A fortnight later it came, was borne upstairs and set in the space cleared for it. Then to his horror Mr. Pinfold observed that an essential part was missing. There should have been a prominent, highly ornamental, copper tap in the center, forming the climax of the design. In its place there was merely a small socket. Mr. Pinfold broke into lamentation. The carriers asserted that this was the condition of the piece when they fetched it. Mr. Pinfold bade them search their van. Nothing was found. Mr. Pinfold surcharged the receipt “incomplete” and immediately wrote to the firm ordering a diligent search of the warehouse where the wash-hand stand had reposed en route and enclosing a detailed drawing of the lost member. There was a brisk exchange of letters, the carriers denying all responsibility. Finally Mr. Pinfold, decently reluctant to involve the donor in a dispute about a gift, wrote to James Lance asking for corroboration. James Lance replied: there never had been any tap such as Mr. Pinfold described.

  “You haven’t always been altogether making sense lately,” said Mrs. Pinfold when her husband showed her this letter, “and you’re a very odd color. Either you’re drinking too much or doping too much, or both.”

  “I wonder if you’re right,” said Mr. Pinfold. “Perhaps I ought to go slow after Christmas.”

  The children’s holidays were a time when Mr. Pinfold felt a special need for unconsciousness at night and for stimulated geniality by day. Christmas was always the worst season. During that dread week he made copious use of wine and narcotics and his inflamed face shone like the florid squireens depicted in the cards that littered the house. Once catching sight of himself in the looking-glass, thus empurpled and wearing a paper crown, he took fright at what he saw.

  “I must get away,” said Mr. Pinfold later to his wife. “I must go somewhere sunny and finish my book.”

  “I wish I could come too. There’s so much to be done getting Hill’s horrible fields back into shape. I’m rather worried about you, you know. You ought to have someone to look after you.”

  “I’ll be all right. I work better alone.”

  The cold grew intense. Mr. Pinfold spent the day crouched over the library fire. To leave it for the icy passages made him shudder and stumble, half benumbed, while outside the hidden sun glared over a landscape that seemed all turned to metal; lead and iron and steel. Only in the evenings did Mr. Pinfold manage a semblance of jollity, joining his family in charades or Up Jenkins, playing the fool to the loud delight of the youngest and the tolerant amusement of the eldest of his children, until in degrees of age they went happily to their rooms and he was released into his own darkness and silence.

  At length the holidays came to an end. Nuns and monks received their returning charges and Lychpole was left in peace save for rare intrusions from the nursery. And now just when Mr. Pinfold was gathering himself as it were for a strenuous effort at reformation, he was struck down by the most severe attack of his “aches” which he had yet suffered. Every joint, but especially feet, ankles, and knees, agonized him. Dr. Drake again advocated a warm climate and prescribed some pills which he said were “something new and pretty powerful.” They were large and drab, reminding Mr. Pinfold of the pellets of blotting-paper which used to be rolled at his private school. Mr. Pinfold added them to his bromide and chloral and crème de menthe, his wine and gin and brandy, and to a new sleeping-draught which his doctor, ignorant of the existence of his other bottle, also supplied.

  And now his mind became much overcast. One great thought excluded all others, the need to escape. He, who even in this extremity eschewed the telephone, telegraphed to the travel-agency with whom he dealt: Kindly arrange immediate passage West Indies, East Indies, Africa, India, anywhere hot, luxury preferred, private bath, outside single cabin essential, and anxiously awaited the reply. When it came it comprised a large envelope full of decorative folders and a note saying they awaited his further instructions.

  Mr. Pinfold became frantic. He knew one of the directors of the firm. He thought he had met others. It came to him in his daze quite erroneously that he had lately read somewhere that a lady of his acquaintance had joined the board. To all of them at their private addresses he dispatched peremptory telegrams: Kindly investigate wanton inefficiency your office. Pinfold.

  The director whom he really knew took action. There was little choice at that moment. Mr. Pinfold was lucky to secure a passage in the Caliban, a one-class ship sailing in three days for Ceylon.

  During the time of waiting Mr. Pinfold’s frenzy subsided. He became instead intermittently comatose. When lucid he was in pain.

  Mrs. Pinfold said, as she had often said before: “You’re doped, darling, up to the eyes.”

  “Yes. It’s those rheumatism pills. Drake said they were very strong.”

  Mr. Pinfold, who was normally rather deft, now became clumsy. He dropped things. He found his buttons and laces intractable, his handwriting in the few letters which his journey necessitated, uncertain, his spelling, never strong, wildly barbaric.

  In one of his clearer hours he said to Mrs. Pinfold: “I believe you are right. I shall give up the sleeping-draughts as soon as I get to sea. I always sleep better at sea. I shall cut down on drink too. As soon as I get rid of these damned aches, I shall start work. I can always work at sea. I shall have the book finished before I get home.”

  These resolutions persisted; there was a sober, industrious time ahead of him in a few days’ time. He had to survive somehow until then. Everything would come right very soon.

  Mrs. Pinfold shared these hopes. She was busy with her plans for the farm which the newly liberated territory made more elaborate. She could not get away. Nor did she think her presence was needed. Once her husband was safely on board, all would be well with him.

  She helped him pack. Indeed he could do nothing except sit on a bedroom chair and give confused directions. He must take foolscap paper, he said, in large quantities; also ink, foreign ink was never satisfactory. And pens. He had once experienced great difficulty in New York in purchasing pen-nibs; he had in the end had recourse to a remote law-stationer’s. All foreigners, he was now convinced, used some kind of stylographic instrument. He must take pens and nibs. His clothes were a matter of indifference. You could always get a Chinaman, anywhere out of Europe, to make you a suit of clothes in an afternoon, Mr. Pinfold said.

  That Sunday morning Mr. Pinfold did not go to Mass. He lay in bed until midday and, when he came down, hobbled to the drawing-room window and gazed across the bare, icy park thinking of the welcoming tropics. Then he said: “Oh God, here comes the Bruiser.”

  “Hide.”

  “No fire in the library.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re ill.”

  “No. I like the Bruiser. Besides, if you say I’m ill, he’ll set his damned Box to work on me.”

  Throughout the short visit Mr. Pinfo
ld exerted himself to be affable.

  “You aren’t looking at all well, Gilbert,” the Bruiser said.

  “I’m all right really. A twinge of rheumatism. I’m sailing the day after tomorrow for Ceylon.”

  “That’s very sudden, isn’t it?”

  “The weather. Need a change.”

  He sank into his chair and then, when the Bruiser left, got to his feet again with an enormous obvious effort.

  “Please don’t come out,” said the Bruiser.

  Mrs. Pinfold went with him to release his dog and when she returned found Mr. Pinfold enraged.

  “I know what you two have been talking about.”

  “Do you? I was hearing about the Fawdles’ row with the Parish Council about their right of way.”

  “You’ve been giving him my hair for his Box.”

  “Nonsense, Gilbert.”

  “I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was measuring my Life-Waves.”

  Mrs. Pinfold looked at him sadly. “You really are in rather a bad way, aren’t you, darling?”

  *

  The Caliban was not a ship so large as to require a special train; carriages were reserved on the regular service from London. Mrs. Pinfold accompanied him there the day before his departure. He had to collect his tickets from the travel-agency, but when he arrived in London great lassitude came over him and he went straight to bed in his hotel, summoning a messenger from the agency to bring them to him. A young, polite man came at once. He bore a small portfolio of documents, tickets for train and ship and for return by air, baggage forms, embarkation cards, carbon copies of letters of reservation, and the like. Mr. Pinfold had difficulty in understanding. He had trouble with his check book. The young man looked at him with more than normal curiosity. Perhaps he was a reader of Mr. Pinfold’s works. It was more probable that he found something bizarre in the spectacle of Mr. Pinfold, lying there groaning and muttering, propped by pillows, purple in the face, with a bottle of champagne open beside him. Mr. Pinfold offered him a glass. He refused. When he had gone Mr. Pinfold said: “I didn’t at all like the look of that young man.”