Prodigies Page 17

  She was listening and watching intently. ‘May I try?’

  Reluctantly he handed the rifle to her. ‘Take care,’ he said.

  Her fingers moved over the butt and then the barrel. Suddenly she was thinking of that time when she had hesitantly taken Adolph’s bow from him and decisively inserted an arrow. Like Scott now, Adolph had been at first vaguely disapproving, then grudgingly admiring.

  ‘I’ve only once before met a woman with any interest in guns. That was in Oregon. The woman in that case was only interested in guns because she used one to shoot her husband.’

  ‘May I?’

  She raised the rifle, looking over at him.

  He nodded.

  She fired up into the empty sky, with no intention of hitting anything. She listened intently to the sound reverberating first in her ears and then, so it seemed, at the central core of her being.

  ‘I hope the kick wasn’t too much for you?’

  She shook her head, smiled. Back at home, the gun-room still contained all her father’s guns, regularly cleaned and polished by old Daan, who was the only person now to enter it. On her return, she would go into the gun-room, she would inspect the guns, she would learn to use them. Daan would teach her.

  ‘This may interest you.’ He stooped with difficulty, a hand to knee, and picked up a revolver that had been lying on the ground. ‘A percussion revolver. Made in the States. Robert Adams made it. Its beauty is that it can be cocked either by the thumb or by pressure on the trigger. Lovely.’ He weighed it in his hand.

  ‘May I?’

  It felt cold and hard on her palm.

  ‘Death in such a small thing,’ she said.

  ‘Death can be in even smaller things than that. An insect-bite. A snake-bite. Even a thorn. I’ve seen it.’

  Again she hefted the revolver. ‘ I want one of these. I must get one.’

  She stroked the barrel, smiling, then handed the revolver back to him.

  Sometimes he was limping. Sometimes he was hardly able to walk. Sometimes Jennings, with his quiff of heavily pomaded hair sticking up above his high, shiny forehead, would push him out around the lake in a basket-work chair borrowed from the hotel. On those last occasions, she would adapt her pace to that of the manservant, who, she sensed from his manner of constantly sniffing and turning his head away from her before answering anything she said to him, resented her presence.

  ‘He seems devoted to you,’ she remarked on one occasion, in Jennings’s absence to fetch a handkerchief for his master. She hoped to learn more. The relationship between the two men, though deferential on the one side and commanding on the other, nonetheless was puzzlingly close.

  ‘Yes, he must be. To have accompanied me on all my travels. And now to look after me when I’m such a crock, instead of going back to his wife and children. He hasn’t seen them for, oh, at least two years.’

  Soon he was telling her the story of how he and Jennings had first met. He had been staying in a cheap Bloomsbury hotel – ‘all that I could afford at that time’ – and had encountered this youth of about fourteen or fifteen, who worked there as a general factotum. Nothing was too much trouble for him, nothing beneath him. An orphan, the boy had been brought up in a workhouse, from which he had escaped – ‘ his early years were not all that different from mine.’ When the time had come for Scott to leave the hotel for a journalistic assignment in Turkey, Jennings had asked, simply, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, if he might come too. ‘I told him I didn’t know how I could pay him, and he said he didn’t care about pay. All he asked was that I should meet his expenses. Then he said to me: ‘‘I feel that you are my fate.’’ An odd thing for a boy like that to come out with, don’t you think? Disturbing, too. But’ – he shrugged – ‘that clinched it for me. We’ve been together ever since. He’s a rogue, a scallywag – pinching things not merely from others but from time to time from me. But he’s been through horrific experiences with me and never once complained. Over trivial things he constantly lets me down. But over anything big – well, I know by now that he would stick with me to the death.’

  Scott went on to reveal to her the reason for his gammy leg. As his straggling, famished party had approached a jungle settlement, a dog had rushed out and fastened its teeth in his calf. Fortunately the dog had not been rabid – or he would not be with her now on this hillside, Scott added with a laugh. But the jagged wound had become infected, and the infection often still flared up. ‘I suppose I was lucky not to die of it. If those ninnies wouldn’t pull out a tooth for me, then they‘d hardly have been willing to amputate a leg.’

  ‘What happened to the dog?’

  ‘Oh, the dog it was that died. Jenkins shot it’ – he raised a hand, miming the holding of a revolver – ‘bang, bang, just like that. The headman was furious. Only an unusually large handful of beads appeased him.’

  They walked out of the hotel, where a dance was in progress, and began to stroll through the gardens bordering the lake. Behind them, gradually fading, they could hear the music of a waltz. It was the first waltz to which Alexine had danced with Adolph. She now rarely thought of him, and never with the rage and anguish of the past. But the voluptuous triple time, over-accentuated by the indifferent little band of elderly musicians, brought back a recollection, momentarily piercing and then swiftly fading, of his smooth cheek gleaming under a flaring gasolier, the firm hand at her waist, and the amazingly pale blue eyes looking down into hers.

  ‘Don’t you want to dance?’

  She shook her head, slipping her arm through his.

  ‘I feel bad about monopolizing you like this. All those young men who asked you must be furious with me. An old crock has no business to keep a beautiful young girl from dancing. Certainly not with a lot of handsome and no doubt rich young men like those.’ There was something clumsy and forced, as always, in his banter.

  ‘Oh, I’m not interested in that crowd. They’re all so feeble. They have absolutely nothing of interest to say. They’ve never done anything.’

  ‘You want to be a doer?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I only respect people who are doers. Like my father. But how can I become a doer? Not easy for a woman.’

  ‘Not easy, no. But – you’ll manage it.’

  ‘You think so?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you think that only because I’m rich?’

  ‘I’d no idea whether you were rich or not – not until now. But I see in you …’ He halted and turned to her, searching for a word. ‘Determination. A determination to do – and get – what you want. We’re alike in that.’

  ‘Ever since I was a child, my aunt has been telling me that I’m the girl who always gets what she wants.’

  ‘Yes. She’s right. You always will.’

  His limp was becoming more pronounced, and she could hear a wheezing, like a kettle coming to the boil, from his barrel-like chest. He pointed to a bench. ‘Let’s sit here for a moment.’

  As, with a rustle of the last of all the many evening gowns that Madame Molnar had made for her, Alexine seated herself, she suddenly beard, now from far off, the accelerating close to the waltz. It was followed by the distant sound of clapping.

  ‘What a ludicrous occupation – to hop round a room attached to someone else!’

  Was he being serious? ‘Oh, it can be fun.’

  ‘I’ve never danced from choice. Only from duty. Now’ – he tapped his leg – ‘I have the perfect excuse for not doing so.’

  For a while they sat in silence, staring out at the lake.

  Then Alexine turned abruptly to him: ‘Why did you do it?’

  He stared at her without answering. There was a flutter of alarm in his eyes.

  ‘Why did you first decide to go to Africa?’

  He shrugged. Was he going to respond or not? Then, at last, he did so. ‘ It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. And there are so many answers. Even as a boy, I felt that I had to be somewhere else – it didn’t
matter where – just, just somewhere else. The goal has never been all that important to me – though of course I’ve had to make others believe it to be important, since otherwise I’d never have been able to raise the cash!’ He laughed, stretching out his long, powerful legs ahead of him. ‘What is odd is that, whenever I’ve set off on an expedition, I’ve felt this tremendous excitement. And then, when I’ve returned – however successful the expedition may have been – I’ve felt this profound depression. Success for me is even more disappointing than failure.’

  He brooded for a while. Then he continued: ‘And I love the sense of freedom. I hate all the silly conventions – the constraints – the hypocrisies – the petty ambitions represented by what is now going on over there.’ He indicated the hotel with a jerk of his head. ‘And I hate domesticity. Dreadful. I don’t want a little woman to put on my slippers for me when I come home from the business of the world – or a crowd of children to fondle on my knee. Ugh!’ He pulled a face, teeth-denched and eyes almost shut.

  She felt an extraordinary relief. Here was someone who felt as she had done ever since her childhood.

  With difficulty, as though he were wrestling with himself to reach the truth, he went on: ‘ But of course there’s always been a discreditable side to my motives. There has to have been. Motives almost always have a discreditable side – as, no doubt, you’ll eventually learn. I like to be a Prospero, with no Ariel in attendance but only a host of Calibans, to be cajoled, bullied and bent to my will. I like to have that almost superhuman power.’ He laughed. ‘And now that almost superhuman power has been taken from me. The only person on whom I can rely to obey all my orders, no matter how foolish or repugnant they seem to him, is my little Cockney sparrow. I’m no longer emperor in my own little kingdom but merely a subject in this much larger, safer and drabber one.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t even get myself a decent table in the dining-room or a bedroom with a view of the lake.’

  She stared out at the calm water, across which a solitary black swan was gliding, seemingly without any effort.

  ‘I’m going to go to Africa.’

  ‘Oh, no, my dear. That’s not the place for you. It’s not the place for any woman, and certainly not for a woman who has – I should guess – never lived even for a day in anything but the utmost comfort.’

  ‘That’s why I want to go.’

  He turned his head and stared at her. Then he smiled, revealing those nicotine-yellow teeth of his, and nodded. ‘And I think that you’ll get what you want. Somehow, some time you’ll get it. Didn’t you say that your aunt called you the girl who always got what she wanted?’

  Boldly, defiantly, she now did something that she had been taught that no decent girl ever did. She extended her hand along the back of the bench, the full, cobweb-fine sleeve of her dress falling away to reveal her arm gleaming in the moonlight, and placed it on the back of his neck. She caressed the neck and then drew his head towards her. ‘Please.’ When he resisted her, she repeated it: ‘Please. I want it.’

  He gave a sigh. Then he leaned towards her and put his lips first to her cheek and then, feather-light, to her mouth. She responded by swivelling round her body and putting her other arm about his shoulder.

  Abruptly he jerked away. ‘No. No. This won’t do. I’m sorry. I’m just not up to it.’

  She was stunned by the oddity of what he had just said. His lips had been dry and granular, his clothes, perhaps even his body, had smelled strongly of cigar smoke. ‘But why …?’

  He got to his feet, staggered momentarily, and gave a jerky laugh. ‘My health. I’m an old crock. Past it. Let’s forget about all this.’

  They walked in silence back to the hotel. As they approached it, he began to hum tunelessly to the loudening music. Then he put out an arm and touched her elbow.

  ‘No hard feelings?’ His voice was thick. He opened his mouth to gulp in air, and once again she heard that wheezing.

  ‘None. Oh, none at all.’

  It took her a long time to get to sleep. Was it unusually sultry or did she have a fever? When she did at last drop off, it was to experience a series of confused dreams of wandering alone through a jungle, the birds and animals raucous all around her and sticky lianas trailing over her face and bare arms. He was somewhere deep in the jungle, lying ill, perhaps even dying, and she was unable to find him. She called his name, more and more frantically – first ‘Colonel Scott! Colonel Scott!’ since that was how she had always addressed him, just as he had always addressed her as either ‘Mademoiselle’ or ‘Mademoiselle Thinne’ – and then, ‘Mark! Mark! Mark!’ Repeatedly she awoke and repeatedly she dreamed the same dream.

  Then the dream changed. She was rowing herself in a boat along the tranquil canal beyond the garden of her home, with no one for company other than the mongrel Flopsy. He sat in the stern of the boat, unmoving, ears pricked, his bright eyes fixed on her. The canal kept narrowing; and simultaneously the sky grew darker and darker, and descended lower and lower. Now there was vegetation springing up on either side, black and furry, unlike any vegetation that she had ever known, and she said to herself ‘Mangrove’, having heard him use that word in describing his odysseys. Mangrove. She repeated it. Soon the vegetation was so close that, if she raised and thrust out an oar, she would be able to sweep the oar along it.

  Flopsie stiffened, let out a yelp and leapt out from the boat, towards the encroaching land. She heard a sound of scrabbling paws against those black, hairy leaves, and then a series of high-pitched squeals. She stopped rowing, aghast, but now propelled forward not by her rowing but by an irresistible current, the boat did not slow but, instead, merely sped on the faster. The leaves were brushing her face. The channel was constantly narrowing. Soon it would be impassable. She could feel that encroaching fur, dry and suffocating, on her face and even in her mouth. But, after a few moments of panic, she felt totally relaxed. She let her body slip sideways and back in the boat, she let the oars fall from her hands. She closed her eyes. The fur cocooned her. ‘ Death,’ she thought. ‘This is death.’ She felt no terror. She welcomed it.

  At that moment, she was roused by a knocking at her door. ‘Aren’t you awake yet? Didn’t Liliane call you?’ It was Harriet.

  ‘No. I told her not to call me.’

  ‘I’m just going down to breakfast.’ Harriet stared at Alexine. ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well.’

  ‘I’m fine. Fine. I’ll be down in a moment.’

  Without going to the dining-room for breakfast, she hurried out, eager, however belatedly, once again to take her by now regular morning stroll round the lake. Seated on a bench not far from the hotel, he was waiting for her.

  ‘I overslept. It was a night of strange dreams.’

  He nodded. ‘For me too. In Africa I could sleep in atrocious heat and discomfort. But here … Do you know – this is very odd – in Africa Jennings and I would have almost identical dreams? Once on the same night each of us dreamed that he was using a spear to kill a charging rhinoceros that was about to gore him. Perhaps you and I dreamed the same thing last night?’

  She could not tell him of the ever-encroaching mangroves, she did not know why. ‘I don’t think so. I was dreaming that I was rowing on a canal back in The Hague. I tried to stop dreaming the dream but it wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘Yes, I know those dreams. I often have them. It’s as though one were being dreamed by the dream, not the other way around …

  Forgive me if I don’t accompany you on your walk. I’m off later today and I have a number of things to see to.’

  ‘Off!’ She was amazed. ‘I’d no idea. You never said …’

  ‘I decided only late last night. Between one dream and another. I suddenly realized there was no point in my staying on here. The waters have done nothing for me – other than giving me diarrhoea. I had enough of that in Africa. I suppose I could entrust myself to Dr Weiss, but somehow I don’t think I’d fall for his sort of charlatanry. And to fall for charlatanry
is the only way to be cured by it. Besides, I really must get to London, where I must see to the publication of my book, and give a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society and, oh, deal with a host of other things.’

  ‘Well, then …’ She tried to conceal her desolation that he should not merely be leaving but should also be leaving so abruptly, without any apparent qualm. Was that all that their friendship had meant to him? ‘I hope that we meet again one day.’

  She held out her hand, but he seemed not to see it.

  ‘I hope so too. Who knows? At all events, thank you for your entertaining – and stimulating – company. I have a feeling that your mother didn’t really approve of me. It was good of her to allow us to see so much of each other.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t tell me whom I see and don’t see.’

  He laughed. ‘Good. You’re clearly a woman not merely of independent means but also of independent mind. You’re prepared to take risks. Not to be prepared to take risks is the greatest risk of all in life. I can see you’ll go far.’

  ‘Even to Africa?’

  ‘Wherever you want to go.’

  Again she held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Colonel Scott.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mademoiselle Thinne.’ This time he took the hand.

  Slowly, without once gazing round, she began her circle of the lake. Yes, it was much sultrier today. It even looked as if a storm were brewing. Clouds were bulging grey-green above the darker green of the mountains ringing the lake. But she neither turned back nor hurried. At first she had been nauseated by the smell of his cigars, just as she had been nauseated by once boldly trying to smoke one of her father’s. But now the smell came back to her with a hallucinatory vividness, as though it were an emanation of his whole being. It was far stronger than the smell of the lush grass beneath her shoes as she skirted a puddle brimming with water, of the trailing wild roses under which she was constantly obliged to stoop, or of the eau-de-Cologne on the handkerchief that she drew from a pocket and pressed first against her forehead and then against a cheek.