Free The Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd Page A

Hetty.’
    ‘Is she in Melbourne?’
    ‘No. She’s up at Westhill, Cousin Hetty.’
    ‘Well, goodnight. Tell Uncle Arthur one o’clock on Thursday.’
    ‘Yes. Goodnight, Cousin Hetty.’ I was like a schoolboy who tries to placate a master by frequent ‘sirs.’
    I sat down again at the dinner table and from embarrassment gave a vulgar snigger, which I detested even as I uttered it. Arthur ignored it. All the lively malice had gone from his eyes. The lids were heavy and he looked very high-minded.
    ‘Your poor grandmother,’ he said, ‘was unwell for the whole voyage, which lasted sixteen weeks, as they were becalmed off Nigeria. She was expecting her first child, andalthough she travelled so much during her life, the sea never agreed with her.’
    He could not change the subject immediately. That would be an admission before a young man, which he would never make, that he had behaved badly. He was trying to reinstate himself in his own good opinion by continuing the same subject from a lofty angle. He talked about his father’s illness and his mother’s patience. The ship in his imagination was at once converted from a nautical brothel into a kind of
Mayflower
full of grave and reverend pilgrims. We both found it less entertaining under this aspect, but I knew it was hopeless to expect him to return to his former mood tonight, and we moved into the drawing-room. Here Arthur lighted a little lamp behind a miniature of Alice painted on glass, or in some way transferred to it.
    ‘Your grandmother,’ he said, excusing this ceremony, ‘was a saint, but a saint who loved the world, the only true kind.’
    He sat down at the piano and played Brahms’s cradle song. After that he sat still for a minute or two, his right hand with its huge signet ring resting on the keys. His face was immensely sad and noble. Then softly he began to play a little Chopin prelude which I knew well. He had once told me that it was Alice’s favourite melody, but he did not play it often for fear of deadening his response. As he played I felt dreadfully sorry for all these old people, and tried to imagine how I would feel if I were seventy-seven, and the only one of my generation left was a cousin whom at the moment I cannot stand, but with whom I would be compelled to associate as she would be the only evidence that I had lived.
    But after all, this embarrassing evening was thirty years ago. If Hetty were alive today, she would be about one hundred and eight. Seeing that she has become all dust and flowers, surely it is permissible now to refer to any part of her anatomy. Part of her may be the daphne in the garden, or Dudley’s silken ear.
    I had to dine several times with Arthur before I could lead him back, by silences and suggestions, to the subject of the voyage. As I have stated, much of it was unprintable, and the rest will not be relevant till later, but I may give here his description of Percy Dell.
    ‘Percy,’ he said, ‘was one of those unfortunate creatures to whom the Almighty has granted no other sign of manhood than a large Adam’s apple. He was five foot four and I must say I am very glad that I never saw him with his clothes off. He would have compared very unfavourably with the Hermes of Praxiteles. Your grandfather used to declare that he was what Casanova called
uno bello castrato,
but it is difficult to see how this could have been so, as Austin was compelled to admit. Percy the Protoplasm is a more accurate description. He was very anxious to appear important and was always exercising himself in great matters which were too high for him. He would make sententious criticisms of political speeches. He mouthed his words and dragged down his wretched little chin and said things like “I am of the opinion that it is a most imprudent utterance.” Hetty’s fullblooded rampaging vigour drew him like a white moth to a furnace, but she couldn’t stand him. At least that’s how it looked. When she stood posturing as a