A Postillion Struck by Lightning (25 page)

It is impossible to guess. From the moment that the letters stopped coming from South America, about 1908, until the telephone call, all remains lost in a distant past and will never, I suppose, be discovered.

It appears that for some years in England he made a modest living by painting, and selling, copies of Flemish “masterpieces”. Usually on leather, or on secondhand canvases. Sometimes he used seamen's wooden chests, or boxes, which he picked up for shillings in the junk markets of Brighton, Worthing and Shoreham. These he covered with leather and jolly Breughel-peasants busy at their weddings, funerals and harvests. Sometimes Princes and Kings, glittering in armour, astride horses slashing at each other with swords or spears. On occasions, to vary the pace, wild groups of dead pheasant or duck hung garlanded in grapes and vines or improbable Coats of Arms.

These he covered with a special varnish which he had invented himself and which in a very short time crackled and “aged” the paint and the leather and gave to all the patina of sepia-antiquity, as long as one didn't look too deeply. Passed off as Early Flemish, or Dutch, two galleries in London kept him gainfully occupied
for some years with these curious works which as often as not ended up in America or Canada.

There still remain some excellent examples of his honesty on the walls of a big pub in Brighton and various smaller establishments along the coast, landlords of which accepted a small canvas for the walls of their private bars in exchange for a few pints of beer. Or, if he was lucky, a bottle of wine.

His “master” was Wouvermaans. And many a second-hand canvas covered by him with rearing horses and falling soldiers may still yet be thundering about in the drawing-rooms of innumerable commercial hotels from Eastbourne to Matlock Spa.

He was, in short, a faker. And a very good one. In spite of all the languages, the travelling, the education and the family background which he had, he seems only to have made his living by deception, but after he came into our lives, or we came into his, whichever way you care to look at it, he stopped painting and scrabbling about in the junk shops and gave it up to live comfortably, if modestly, on the allowance from my unfortunate father.

I, of course, was mesmerised by him. I was happy to sit in a chair beside him in his smelly, crowded studio, looking at his stamp albums, his maps of the Amazon, faded and torn, his piles of old magazines and books, or just listen to him talking in his heavy accent about his journeys into the Andes on a mule or his astonishing voyage on a sailing ship from Lima to Valparaiso; but more than that he would not give away. And the stories had a vague not-quite-true-but-could-be quality about them which in no way diminished their delight.

He sat in a high carved oak armchair, his long bony fingers clasping the arms; his finger-nails were long like a Mandarin's, but always scrupulously clean which constantly amazed me. Sometimes in the middle of a story he would start to crack eggs and flour into a bowl and begin to cook something for his supper, a cake or biscuits: he told me that one of the wobbly tables which supported his gas-rings came from Versailles and probably belonged at one time to Marie Antoinette because there was an “A” worked into the chipped and crumbling gesso. Lifting the tattered American cloth he would make me peer at the fine carved legs and stretchers and ask me if I could see the “A”, and sometimes I thought that I did. But I could never be sure. He said that all his Bits and Pieces came from junk shops and sale rooms when he was looking about for his work. The great red lacquer bed was
from China and he felt sure that it was brought over after the Boxer Rebellion, and who was I to doubt him? All his Treasures, he said, had cost him nothing but a discerning eye, and he said that one must cultivate such a thing by watching, looking and listening, and also by always asking Why? and What? and Where? “You must be Observant, boy. Always Observe. If you do not understand what you see, ask someone to tell you what it is … if they don't know, you must take books and find out. Always seek, always question, always be Interested, otherwise you will perish.”

This, strangely enough, was something which my father had inherited from him. We were always told to Look … to watch, to see and to listen. Even if it bored us to death at times; like Chamber Music which I hated but had to listen to very often in order to be able, later on I was told, to appreciate the great symphonies. Consequently we were curious children and delighted in finding things out for ourselves even though our frequent questioning must have seemed tremendously irritating to many of our friends. Although I detested any form of Games, and had always managed to avoid Children's Parties for fear that I should be forced to play them, I did enjoy, constantly, my father's Remember Games. In a tube train look and see how many pairs of brown shoes there are on the people opposite. How many bunions, which has a lace untied, who wears spats? And then look away at the faces above and try to fit each one out. This was a simple game to play and fun, but quite often caused offence to the unfortunate victims sitting facing one who twitched and fidgeted and stared about them under the implacable observing eyes of the child opposite.

Other games were looking in shop windows and counting the number of pots or pans with a black lid or a blue lid, how many milk jugs there were on a given row, or plates in a pile, then, making a mental list, one wandered away for a few minutes to return later and check. This caused one to give the impression that one was loitering; however it was all very good training and not easily forgotten. And although I was such a dunce at school, at these games I was more than outstanding, simply because I found detail fascinating. Of course there were never any rewards for being good at these games; it was just expected that you would be, and the reward was getting the lists as correct as possible. And it was rewarding in a strange way. Lastingly so I imagine.

The last time I went to see my grandfather at his smelly old house was just before I went up to Scotland. He was sad that I was leaving for “so far away”, as he put it, and made me promise to write to him from time to time and to send him any new stamps which might come out in that strange, to him, country. He was regretful that I was going because he had started to enjoy the family which he had cheerfully denied for so many years and feared the loneliness again. Or at least I suppose that is what it was. Also he was very anxious, suddenly, to tell me about The Family and said that I should know, and be taught, French and German so that I could go back one day to the Estates which he had left and which my unfortunate father never had the chance of seeing until 1921 or '22 when he took my mother back to Iseghem. I say “back” which is incorrect, since he had never ever been there, however “back” is what sounded right. Apart from a tomb in the local church and a street named after my great grandfather, very little remained of the Estates now almost surrounded by factories and urban streets. However, the chateau, which still stands today and looks much as it must have done then, was an imposing place of pale rose brick and grey stone with many shuttered windows, standing on a little hill which sloped down to a long tree-bordered lake spanned by a high, gracefully arching, white iron bridge.

Rooks cawed in the great beeches all around, and there was a screaming baby in a pram on the elegant, many-stepped, terrace. Relations were cool and polite and not about to be welcoming to the English sprig who so suddenly arrived that summer day. And my father left never to return, not to speak of it ever to me at least.

I remember in the war having 48 hours' leave after the catastrophe at Arnhem. I went to the Officers' Leave Hotel, the Palace in Brussels, wanting only to bathe and sleep for the whole two days. A very old porter helped, churlishly, to carry my sleeping-bag and haversack. In the room I fumbled for a tip and saw him looking at my name painted on the canvas of my kit-bag. He asked me, in French, where I came from and what my Christian names were. I told him, and his eyes filled with tears as he pulled off his cap and bowed gently to me, to my embarrassment and surprise. He had been my grandfather's groom at Iseghem and remembered him well.

That was the nearest I ever got to the Estates.

“When you go to this Scottish school you must study your French and German, you must be able to speak them fluently and correctly. It is easy to do, it is in your blood. I speak five, as you know, and I started to learn when I was a very small child, possibly when I was five or six. It is late for you, but you must strive. It will make you less English'

I remember promising that I would try and he gave me a keepsake. A small metal lay figure which he had used for many years to draw from. I was sad at the apparent meanness of the gift, I was hopefully expecting a Delft jar or a rather pleasant jade frog which sat, with a coveted paperweight containing a black and yellow salamander, on the mantelshelf. However, I made do with the tin figure, which is just as well, for it is the only thing I ever received from him beyond the doubtful ability to paint, his good brown eyes, and a vague feeling of failure.

Nearly forty years later, after he had been to see “Death In Venice”, my father telephoned me here in France. Something which he had never done before. “I was very moved indeed,” he said, “to see my father again.”

“Well!” said Lally one evening while she was sewing Cashes labels into all my shirts. “Now we have a new brother and a new grandfather. Whatever next, I wonder! And you mark my words, things always go in threes. They always come in threes, you see if I lie.”

Because she absolutely never ever lied to us or evaded any question, we took her very seriously. One never knew when she might be right. Sometimes, like Ilfracombe, we found out that she was wrong, and that instead of Wales on which she insisted, it was in Devon, but those were very slight irregularities. We never got fobbed off with a non-answer. We always got a Fact. Even inaccurate was better than none at all or a “Don't bother me now I'm busy” or “Look it up for yourself, it's in a book.” Always an answer. Even if it did mean having to check from time to time, just for safety's sake.

“Does a postillion blow his trumpet on a coach?” I asked my father. We were walking down the lane to the quarry-garage.

“Nonsense. He's the rider on the near horse if you've only got two for the coach; he's the driver.”

“What happens if he gets struck by lightning then?”

My father laughed. “I wouldn't care to be in the coach, that's all I can say. For God's sake, turn your feet out, you walk like a penguin.”

These weren't serious inaccuracies, easily checked after all, and as Lally said, Devon and Wales were both West so we were at least in the right direction.

She had our complete confidence whatever mistakes might be made, and therefore when she said about “coming in threes” I felt uneasy for what next might befall us. I had rather counted on the Scotland Trip as one of the three, but she seemed not to, so I worriedly awaited the final blow.

It came in the form of a letter to my father from the Aleford's Estate Manager. The Alefords owned the Court Farm and all the land around it. They had decided to retire from farming and move away. The Cottage would be up for sale at the auction in December next. The house and one acre. As a separate lot.

We had no idea, Elizabeth and I, that we did not own the Cottage. No idea that we merely rented it by the year from the rather jolly family down at the Court. It was ours completely. We had, it seemed, had it for ever and ever, and every flint and tile belonged to us. The total shock of the truth was far worse than brothers or grandfathers or even a violent change of school. To think that the Cottage was no longer ours, that in fact it never had been except for a weekly payment of seven shillings, was unthinkable. We were struck dumb with horror and grief. A grief which was silent and therefore all the more irritating to our elders. Lally was gentle and patient. She didn't mention anything about “Three” and simply realised that our misery was too great for more than a bit of extra loving and second helpings of pudding.

“They'll find somewhere else, even nicer than the Cottage, you see,” she said with tactful ignorance. “Remember what a lot it needs doing to it! That floor in the hall is all rotten; it needs proper sanitation, and water, and light, and the roof's bound to go in the next big storm and really I'm sure it's all for the best. You see if I lie.”

But we were listless with despair and all her cheering up was to no avail. My father was patient with our hollow-eyed sullenness and promised that he and our mother would go to the auction in December and try to buy it… but I knew as he spoke
that it would be only a vague possibility. New brothers and schools and grandfathers cost money, even I began to realise that after a while.

In fact Lally was right about the repairs which the Cottage needed. But somehow without the old pump, without the lamps in the long winter evenings, without those solitary walks to the privy, the Cottage couldn't ever be the same again. The idea of turning on a tap in the big flint kitchen might have been delight for her but was abhorrent to me. I knew, even in my selfish and uncaring way, that things were beginning to change everywhere. Caravans had suddenly sprouted up in the fields at Cuckmere Haven. Beastly little white boxes filled with whey-faced Londoners peering through their “cheery” orange and brown caravan-curtains. Even the Downs behind Friston and East Dean were being ploughed up for the planting of a great pine forest, and there was talk of rows and rows of cheap bungalows being allowed to scab and scar the soft dales and swards of the Seven Sisters themselves. It was all changing all right. And if the Cottage did not belong to us, if it had all been a long, glorious dream and if none of it had ever really happened at all, then, so be it. Life, or rather my own life, for I tended, as usual, to see everything in terms of myself, was starting to shred away like a sail in the wind, and I was very well aware that my little boat was far too frail a craft to weather the storms which were to come. Sailless I should be sunk or beached. Neither idea pleased me. Staring dully up at my tit-and-wisteria wallpaper, I had realised that Lally's words of some time ago were true. “You can't have a summer without a good winter,” she had said. Winter was now.