He crossed the Atlantic in full retreat before steady westerlies. Somewhere between Pará and Madeira, which they reached on Christmas Day, and in a gesture of exorcism he put his Journal in a weighted sack together with Lena’s last letter, still unopened, and threw it all into the sea. It was only later he discovered that his manuscript sketchbook must have been tucked into the Journal, for he never found it again. By then a different abandonment was sweeping the ship with its seasonal roarings.
‘Merry Christmas everyone …’
‘… comfort and joy …’
‘… not goodwill to all men, that’s a mistranslation, you know. It’s to all men of goodwill. Absolutely not to rotters and bounders …’
‘Happy Christmas.’
‘Down the hatch.’
Bemused in the midst of all this he caught sight of a rosy and clubbable Sir Edward in the bar mirror raising his glass in a toast and simultaneously raised his own. A holiday – of course, that was what it had all been. A well-earned holiday, and a very jolly one too.
The Hildebrand finally docked at Liverpool at nine o’clock on the morning of December 31st. The last day of the year was grey, the air held its breath with the sense of oncoming snow.
‘Did you have a good trip, sir?’ asked Tom Shannon, who had been on the quay since seven.
‘Capital, thank you. Rattling good time. Oh-oh,’ he clutched suddenly at the young man’s arm with a gloved hand, ‘steady as she goes. This ground is more mobile than I remember it.’
‘It’ll firm up, Sir Edward.’
‘No doubt. Thank you for meeting me, Tom, it’s most kind. Having to get off a boat like this first thing in the morning with all one’s belongings – it’s like being chucked out of a hotel into the street … I say, is that my luggage? Well hang on, I have something for you.’
When he had passed perfunctorily through the Customs shed Edward unstrapped his suitcase and scrabbled among underwear before handing his escort a blackish lump. ‘There,’ he said proudly, doing up the bag again, ‘there’s a bit of exotica for you.’
‘It’s extremely kind of you, sir … What exactly is it?’
‘An alligator, can’t you see? I agree it’s crudish. The point is not the model but what it’s made of. It’s compressed stuff called guaraná which makes a dashed fine drink.’
‘This is a drink?’ Tom turned the lump uncertainly in his hands.
‘Many, many drinks. You’re supposed to scrape it with a file made of dried fish-tongue to get the powder, so they tell me. Personally I’d be inclined to try a nutmeg grater.’
‘Rather a pity to spoil it,’ the young man said, putting it away in his pocket. ‘It would look well on the mantelpiece. Not the sort of thing everybody has in Knowsley.’
‘Well, just as you like.’
‘Your train leaves in half an hour, sir. You must be anxious to get home.’
‘Oh yes, I suppose I am. Can’t wait to see the dogs.’
At the station Edward surprised himself by finding his ticket, an impressive document since the voyage was inclusive of the rail journey to London. Safely into the guard’s van went the great cabin trunk, its japanned expanses no longer as virgin as six weeks before, being scratched here and there and having acquired the crayoned hieroglyphs which only Customs men and porters understand. Once in his compartment he settled his bags and then himself. From beneath the carriage a cloud of steam was drifting up beyond the window making a ghost of Tom Shannon as he waited patiently on the platform. Suddenly Edward sprang to his feet and threw his weight on the leather window-strap. The pane fell with a bang and warm steam eddied in.
‘I say, Tom, ghastly thought’s just struck me. Sorry and so on but I seem to have given all my immediate worldly wealth to a very fly customer named Pyce. You wouldn’t by any chance have a cab fare about you? It’s really too embarrassing. I’ll be all right once I get to the club. I’ll cash a cheque and send you back the money first thing tomorrow, of course. Oh Tom, bless you. Noble indeed.’
As the train laid its plume of smuts across a bleak and wintry landscape the excitement of arrival ebbed away. Everything was exactly as comfortless as he had known it would be. He was back. Maybe he had never left after all. Maybe six weeks ago, six minutes ago, he had fallen asleep in the club as he so frequently did and there would come a deafening rattle in his ear as of wheels over points and junctions and he would suddenly awake to find the tea-things arriving on a silver tray. A panic at having left something far too late gripped him. It spoke urgently of being drawn back into an elderly world full of the servility which conceals an utter want of interest. And behind this world another, a vast and stolid provincial precinct grey with cathedrals and choral societies.
But it was not a dream. When an hour or two later his cab drew up in St James’s he could see the familiar doorman hurrying out across the pavement towards him, a large umbrella poised in readiness. As he wearily marshalled his gloves and stick this man leaned in across the trunk strapped in front to pay the driver. Then his own door opened and cold air blew in together with a few whirling white fragments. Passively, like any invalid or supplicant, he watched a sleeve which seemed to extend for ever reaching slowly down towards him as if stretching from another world, dusted with snowflakes and encrusted with gold braid. He took the white-gloved hand with resignation and was dragged deferentially out.