The Comforters

‘Loved them, I’m sure. But we were awfully tickled.’

Louisa, in her passion for pickling and preserving, keeps up with the newest methods. Some foods go into jars, others into tins sealed by her domestic canning machine. When Louisa’s own figs in syrup, two cans of them with neatly pencilled labels, had arrived for Sir Edwin Manders, Helena had felt uneasy at first.

‘Is she having a lark with us, Edwin?’

‘Of course she is.’

Helena was not sure what sort of a lark. She wrote to Louisa that they were all very amused.

‘Did they enjoy the figs?’ Louisa pressed Laurence.

‘Yes, they were lovely.’

‘They are as good as Manders’, dear, but don’t tell your father I said so.’

‘Better than Manders’,’ Laurence said.

‘Did you taste some, then?’

‘Not actually. But I know they were most enjoyable, Mother said’ (which Helena had not said).

‘Well, that’s what I sent them for. To be enjoyed. You shall have some later. I don’t know what they are talking about — “much amused”. Tell your father that I’m giving him the cigarettes for enjoyment, tell him that, my dear.’

Laurence was smoking his Bulgarian. ‘Most heady,’ he said. ‘But Mother takes a fit when you send expensive presents. She knows you have to deny yourself and —’

He was about to say ‘pinch and scrape’, using his mother’s lamenting words; but this would have roused the old lady. Besides, the phrase was obviously inaccurate; his grandmother was surrounded by her sufficiency, always behind which hovered a suspicion of restrained luxury. Even her curious dishes seemed chosen from an expansive economy of spirit rather than any consideration of their cost in money.

‘Helena is a sweet girl, but she does deceive herself. I’m not in need of anything, as she could very well see, if she took the trouble. There is no need for Helena to grieve on my account.’

Laurence was away all day, with his long legs in his small swift car, gone to look round and about the familiar countryside and coastline, gone to meet friends of his own stamp and education, whom he sometimes brought back to show off to them his funny delicious grandmother. Louisa Jepp did many things during that day. She fed the pigeons and rested. Rather earnestly, she brought from its place a loaf of white bread, cut the crust off one end, examined the loaf, cut another slice, and looked again. After the third slice she began at the other end, cutting the crust, peering at the loaf until, at the fourth slice, she smiled at what she saw, and patting the slices into place again put back the loaf in the tin marked ‘bread’.

At nine o’clock Laurence returned. The sitting-room which looked out on the village was very oblong in shape. Here he found his grandmother with visitors, three men. They had been playing rummy, but now they were taking Louisa’s refreshments, seated along each side of the room. One was in an invalid chair; this was a young man, not more than twenty-four.

‘Mr Hogarth, my grandson; my grandson, Mr Webster; and this is young Mr Hogarth. My grandson is on the B.B.C., my daughter’s son, Lady Manders. You’ve heard him give the commentaries on the football and the races, Laurence Manders.’

‘Heard you last Saturday.’ This was Mr Webster, the oldest guest, almost as old as Louisa.

‘Saw you this morning,’ Laurence said.

Mr Webster looked surprised.

‘With the baker’s van,’ Laurence added.

Louisa said, ‘Laurence is very observant, he has to be for his job.’

Laurence, who was aglow from several drinks, spoke the obliging banality, ‘I never forget a face’, and turning to the elder Hogarth he said, ‘For instance, I’m sure I’ve seen your face somewhere before.’ But here, Laurence began to lose certainty. ‘At least — you resemble someone I know but I don’t know who.’

The elder Hogarth looked hopelessly at Louisa, while his son, the boy in the invalid chair, said, ‘He looks like me. Have you seen me before?’

Laurence looked at him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t. Nobody at all like you.’

Then, in case he should have said the wrong thing, considering the young man was a cripple, Laurence rattled on.

‘I may take up detective work one of these days. It would be quite my sort of thing.’

‘Oh no, you could never be a detective, Laurence,’ Louisa said, very seriously.

‘Now, why not?’

‘You have to be cunning to be a detective. The C.I.D. are terribly sly and private detectives will stoop to anything. You aren’t a bit sly, dear.’

‘I notice extraordinary things,’ Laurence boasted casually, lolling his brown head along the back of the sofa. ‘Things which people think are concealed. Awful to be like that, isn’t it?’

Laurence had the feeling that they didn’t like him, they suspected him. He got nervous, and couldn’t seem to say anything right. They more and more seemed not to like him as he went on and on compulsively about the wonderful sleuth he would make. And all the time he was talking he actually was taking them in, sleuth-like.

Their presence in his grandmother’s house was strange and surprising, and for that reason alone did not really surprise him. Louisa is pouring out tea. She calls the young Hogarth ‘Andrew’. His father is ‘Mervyn’ to her. Webster is ‘Mr Webster’.

Mr Webster with his white hair, white moustache and dark nautical jacket is not easy to identify with his early-morning appearance — the tradesman in a sandy-brown overall who calls with the bread: Laurence felt pleased with himself for recognizing Mr Webster, who wore brown suede shoes, size ten by Laurence’s discernment, whose age might be going on seventy-five, and who, by his voice, is a Sussex man.

Mervyn Hogarth was thin and small. He had a washed-out sandy colouring. Louisa had prepared for him a thin slice of brown bread and butter.

‘Mervyn has to eat often, in small snacks, for his gastric trouble, ‘Louisa explained. By his speech, the elder Hogarth is a knowing metropolitan product. God knows what he is doing at Louisa’s, why he is on sufficiently familiar visiting terms for first names and gastric confidences. But Laurence was not a wonderer. He observed that the elder Hogarth wore unpressed flannels and an old ginger tweed jacket with the air of one who can afford to go careless. The son Andrew, with full red lips, was square and large-faced with glasses. He was paralysed in the legs.

As Louisa asked Laurence, ‘Did you have a nice outing, dear?’ Andrew winked at him.

Laurence resented this, an injustice to his grandmother. He felt averse to entering a patronizing conspiracy with Andrew against the old lady; he was on holiday for a special reason connected with a love affair, he wanted a change from the complications of belonging to a sophisticated social group. The grandmother refreshed him, she was not to be winked about. And so Laurence smiled at Andrew, as if to say, ‘I acknowledge your wink. I cannot make it out at all. I take it you mean something pleasant.’

Andrew started looking round the room; he seemed to have missed something that should be there. At last he fixed on the box of Bulgarian cigarettes on Louisa’s sideboard; reaching out he opened the box and helped himself to one. Mr Webster tried to exchange a glance with Louisa disapproving of her guest’s manners, but she would not be drawn in to it. She rose and passed the open box to Laurence.

Andrew told him, ‘They are Bulgarian.’ ‘Yes, I know. Rather odd, aren’t they?’ ‘They grow on one,’ Andrew remarked.

‘Bulgarian!’ his father exclaimed. ‘I must try one!’

Louisa silently passed the cigarettes. She inclined her head demurely towards Laurence, acknowledging an unavoidable truth: the fact that three stubbed-out fat Bulgarian ends already lay in the ash-tray beside Mervyn Hogarth’s chair.

Louisa sat passively witnessing Hogarth’s performance as he affected to savour a hitherto untried brand of cigarette.

‘My dear Louisa, how exotic! I don’t think I could cope with many of these. So strong and so … what shall I say?’

‘Pungent,’ said Louisa patiently, as one who has heard the same word said before by the same man in the same place.

‘Pungent,’ Mervyn repeated, as if she had hit on the one only precise word.

He continued, ‘A flavour of — the Balkans, a tang as of — of—’

Louisa obliged him again, ‘Goats’ milk.’

‘That’s it! Goats’ milk.’

Louisa’s black shiny buttons of eyes turned openly on Laurence. He was watching the man’s face; he glanced towards the ash-tray with its evidence of the pose, then looked at Mervyn again. Louisa began to giggle inaudibly as if she were gently shaking a bottle of cough-mixture within herself. Mr Webster caught her movement with the corner of his eye. From where he was seated, and his neck being stiff, he had to swivel round from the waist to get a better view of Louisa. At this sign, her face puckered slightly, but presently she composed herself like a schoolgirl.

Laurence said to Andrew, ‘Do you live round here?’

Father and son replied simultaneously. Mervyn said, ‘Oh, no’; Andrew said, ‘Oh, yes.’

Louisa’s mirth got the better of her, and though her lips were shut tight she whinnied through her nose like a pony. Mr Webster clicked his cup into his saucer as if the walls had spoken.

The Hogarths immediately attempted to rectify their blunder.

Both started together again — Mervyn: ‘Well, we live in London mostly—’ Andrew: ‘I mean, we’re here most of the time—’ The father decided to let Andrew take over.

‘And we sometimes go abroad,’ he concluded limply.

Laurence looked at his watch, and said hastily to Andrew, ‘Coming for a drink? There’s about fifteen minutes to closing.’ Then he saw his blunder. For the moment the boy had looked quite normal, not a cripple at all.

‘Not tonight thanks. Another time, if you’re staying,’ Andrew said, unsurprised.

‘Laurence is stopping till the end of the week,’ said Louisa. Laurence hurried out. They could hear his footsteps crossing the quiet road and down the village street towards the Rose and Crown.

Mr Webster spoke. ‘Charming boy.’ Louisa said, ‘Yes, and so clever.’ ‘Interesting lad,’ Mervyn said. ‘I was wondering…’ said Andrew. ‘What, dear?’ Louisa asked him. ‘Hadn’t we better clear off till next week?’

Mr Webster twisted round to face the old lady. ‘Mrs Jepp,’ he said, ‘I did not think you would permit your grandson meeting us. I understood he was to be out this evening. I trust he will not be upset in any way.

‘My!’ said Louisa graciously. ‘He won’t be upset, Mr Webster. Young people are very democratic these days.’

That was not what had been meant. Mervyn spoke next.

‘I think he will ask questions. It’s only natural, Louisa, after all, what do you expect?’ He lit one of the Bulgarian cigarettes.

‘Whatever questions should he ask?’

‘He is bound to wonder… .’ said Andrew.

‘He’s bound to ask who we are, what we’re doing here,’ said Mervyn.

Mr Webster looked sadly at Mervyn, pained by some crudity in the other’s words.

‘My!’ said Louisa. ‘Laurence will certainly ask all about you. Would you care for another game, gentlemen?’

Mervyn looked at the clock.

Andrew said, ‘He’ll be back after the pub closes, won’t he?’

Mr Webster smiled paternally at Louisa. ‘The matter is not urgent,’ he said, ‘we can leave our business till the end of the week, if you know of an evening when your grandson will be out.’

‘It can be discussed in front of Laurence,’ she said. ‘Laurence is a dear boy.’

‘Of course,’ said Mervyn.

‘That’s just what we mean,’ said Andrew. ‘The dear boy shouldn’t be made to wonder —’

Louisa looked a little impatient. Something was defeating her. ‘I did hope,’ she said, ‘that we could avoid making any difference between Laurence and ourselves. I assure you, with discretion we could say all we want to say in Laurence’s presence. He has not got a suspicious nature.’

‘Ah, discretion,’ Mr Webster said, ‘my dear Mrs Jepp, discretion is always desirable.’

Louisa beamed warmly at him, as at one who had come nearest to understanding her.

Mervyn spoke. ‘I understand you, Louisa. You can’t bear to participate in separated worlds. You have the instinct for unity, for coordinating the inconsistent elements of experience; you have the passion for picking up the idle phenomena of life and piecing them together. That is your ideal, it used to be mine. Reality, however, refuses to accommodate the idealist. It is difficult at your age to grasp a fact which you have never had occasion to recognize, but —’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Louisa said, ‘not at any age I wouldn’t know.’

‘Of course.

‘You are too far away,’ she said, but then she perked up, ‘Now Mervyn, if you feel I’m too old-fashioned in my ways I will quite understand. You may always withdraw from our arrangements.’

Mervyn, who had stood up, sat down again. Andrew gave an unsmiling laugh which caused Louisa to look at him with surprise.

Andrew responded: ‘He spoke about doing detective work. He seems to be quite smart in the head.’

‘Laurence is doing nicely on the wireless. He would never make a detective, nothing so low.’

‘He would make a good informer,’ Andrew said, and from the privilege of his invalid chair looked squarely at her.

‘My, you need not continue with us, Andrew dear, if anything troubles you. In which case, of course, we shouldn’t continue, should we?’ She looked at Mervyn and Mr Webster, but they did not answer. They rose then, to leave. As he took her hand Mr Webster said, ‘You see, Mrs Jepp, your dear grandson is exceedingly observant. That was the only reason I had for questioning the wisdom.’

Louisa laughed, ‘Oh, he never misses anything. I’ve never met anyone like him for getting the details. But, you know, the dear boy can’t put two and two together.’

‘You mean,’ said Mervyn, ‘that he lacks the faculty of reflection?’

‘I mean,’ said Laurence’s grandmother, ‘that he could be more intelligent in some ways than he is. But he’s clever enough to get on in the world, and he has a sweet nature, that’s what matters.’

‘And if he asks any questions …’ said Andrew.

‘Oh, he will ask questions,’ Louisa answered him.

There was no doing anything with her.

‘Oh, Mrs Jepp, you will be discreet won’t you? I’m sure you will,’ said Mr Webster.

‘My grandson can’t put two and two together — not so’s to make four.’ She looked rather amused so as to make them rather uncomfortable.

‘He’s leaving on Friday?’ Mervyn asked.