The House in Norham Gardens Read online

‘That dress is in one of the trunks in the attic,’ said Clare.

  ‘All Mother’s things were kept.’

  ‘That I cannot understand,’ said cousin Margaret, helping to clear away. ‘The way they’ve never ever thrown away a single thing. It’s stuffed, this place, like a museum.’ The baize door bumped softly behind them as they went through to the kitchen. ‘Heavens, Clare, how do you manage with that stove? And the sink!’

  ‘They’re all right if you’re used to them.’

  ‘I couldn’t live without my Aga. Shall I wash, and you put away?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There was something I rather wanted to talk to you about.’ Cousin Margaret ran water on to the plates, swabbing with practised energy. ‘Just while we’ve got the chance.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s just that you’re always welcome, you know, at Swaffham. You must feel you can always come to us. As family, you know. Edwin and I did want you to be sure about that.’

  ‘In August?’

  ‘Actually I meant any time. If anything happened, you know.’

  ‘If anything happened?’

  ‘Yes.’ Water spat from the tap, spun off the plates. ‘Eventually.’

  Eventually. Quite a few. When your mum and dad – er. ‘Do you mean,’ said Clare, ‘if the aunts died?’

  Cousin Margaret turned the tap on violently. Above rushing water and clatter she could be heard to say things about how of course one didn’t, and naturally one hoped, and there was no reason to.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clare. ‘It’s very kind of you and cousin Edwin. Very kind.’

  ‘And of course it is such fun for the young down there. You know – the Pony Club and the Young Farmers and all that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sal has a marvellous time in the holidays.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hunt Balls, in a year or two. We do feel it must be a bit dull for you here.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Clare, ‘it isn’t dull at all. I like this house being cold and dusty and peculiar and I think the aunts are the most interesting people I’ve ever known. If they are out of touch, like you said, then I think I’d rather be too, if being in touch is what I think it is. I’ve always liked living with them and I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else. When you talk to the aunts they listen, and I listen back at them. The only thing that’s wrong is that they’re old, and as a matter of fact I don’t see what’s wrong with that anyway.’ She dropped a plate: it smacked down on to the floor and lay in three neat pieces.

  Cousin Margaret blinked. She stared at the plug and said, ‘Yes. Quite. Yes, I do see what you mean.’

  Clare picked up the bits of plate, looked at them, and put them in the dustbin.

  ‘We keep breaking things these days,’ she said. ‘Maureen broke one of these the other day.’

  ‘Maureen?’ said cousin Margaret, brightly.

  ‘She’s somebody who lives here now. In one of the top rooms. We had a Gap – I mean a financial problem – so I decided to let one of the rooms. Mrs Hedges got it ready and I found Maureen in the Post Office window.’

  Cousin Margaret blinked again. She wiped her hands on the kitchen towel and said, ‘Well, I must say, you do seem awfully sensible about things, Clare.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Clare. ‘Good.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought the aunts would have been all that keen on the idea of a lodger, that’s all.’

  ‘They don’t mind.’

  ‘Don’t they? Oh, I see. Perhaps we’d better go through and join Aunt Susan?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare. They went through the baize door again. In the hall cousin Margaret stopped in front of the mirror and prodded her hair. She was looking very pink. ‘I must say,’ she said, ‘you do seem to cope awfully well. I sometimes wonder if perhaps Sal is a bit … Of course, being one of a large family is marvellous, but … Oh well. But, Clare, do get in touch if ever, well, if ever you have any problems.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare, ‘I’ll get in touch. Thank you, cousin Margaret. Thanks very much.’

  Later, lying in bed, with the house huge and silent around her, everyone stowed away into separate rooms, the aunts, Maureen, cousin Margaret having a bath, with sounds of distant splashing, she opened the diary and began to read.

  ‘Aug. 10th 1905. Port Moresby. This morning we reached the settlement here, which is the seat of our Administration, and are lodged, as comfortably as one might expect, at the Residency. One cannot but admire the efforts of the Administrator to bring the advantages of British justice to the natives of Papua, beset as he is on all sides by difficulties, not least of which is the lack of cooperation of the tribes who are in a state of constant tumultuous warfare with each other, and who indulge in headhunting and cannibalism. Their chief intercourse with Europeans has been hitherto with missionaries, several of whom, I am informed, have met with a fate upon which it is pleasanter not to dwell. The heat is great, and the insects a torment. Sanderson and Hemmings are anxious to depart as soon as possible for the interior. A letter awaited me here from Violet, who writes that Eights Week was most agreeable, in good weather, with Christ Church head of the river. Little Susan wrote too, in a good firm hand, and a nice attention to spelling.’

  There was a blob of wax on the page at this point, as though Great-grandfather had tipped the candle over. The next entry was nearly a week later.

  ‘Aug. 16th. We have spent several days now in exploration of the Kemp-Welch basin, having secured the services of porters in Port Moresby, as well as the protection of some native police, most kindly supplied by the Administrator, and for whose presence we have indeed been grateful, the massacre of unwary travellers being apparently common in these parts. The terrain is most inhospitable and we advance but a few miles each day, being impeded by the luxuriance of the vegetation, which consists for the most part of dense forests of eucalyptus, mangrove swamps, and plantations of bamboo, pandanus and sugar cane around the native villages. The tribes in this part are the Kamale, Quaipo, and Veiburi, and are extremely unwilling to enter into friendly intercourse – I have met with great difficulty in persuading them to talk. However, some men of the Veiburi tribe were more forthcoming than most and with the aid of an interpreter I was able to make some useful notes about burial customs, taboos and spiritual beliefs. Hemmings has some fine bird of paradise skins, and Sanderson is well pleased with his botanical specimens. I have obtained some good examples of the stone adzes used by these tribesmen, and am most anxious to secure further items, in particular the ceremonial masks and shields of which I have heard, and of which the finest, I believe, are to be found in the Purari River area.’

  At this point a half page had been left blank, to accommodate an insect, squashed and unidentifiable. Had it tormented Great-grandfather and been summarily dealt with?

  The diary proceeded. Sometimes the entries were long and detailed, sometimes brief, a mere few words noting the position, or date, as though Great-grandfather had been too exhausted after a day contending with mangrove swamps and native hostility to do more than flop on to his camp bed. Hemmings developed a fever, and they had to halt for several days on the coast, where Great-grandfather busied himself collecting accounts of tribal superstition. ‘These are a people deeply imbued with spiritual beliefs,’ he wrote. ‘For them the invisible world is as real as the visible, believing as they do that all living creatures possess souls and spirits, which, after leaving the mortal frame, wander hither and thither during the hours of the night. So easy and unaffected is their converse with spirits, in particular the spirits of their ancestors, that to become for long involved with their ways of thought is to feel one’s own rational foundations begin to shake. The world of scientific truth seems at times as remote as my own study in Norham Gardens.’ Hemmings recovered, though the poor fellow had lost much weight and was a dreadful yellow colour, and the party embarked in a small steamship for the Fly River where they spent a few days chugging along the swampy rive
r, largely for the benefit of Sanderson, who wished to make a collection of the orchids and creepers that grew on the banks. Any natives that were to be found fled in confusion on sight of the steamship, or rained arrows upon them from the shelter of the undergrowth so that Great-grandfather was under-occupied and spent the time organizing his notes and complaining of the humidity. The high point of the expedition, for him, was yet to come.

  The party left the Fly River and made their way to the delta of the Purari. This was the moment for which Great-grandfather had been waiting. ‘At last,’ he wrote, ‘I approach the principal of my objectives, namely the acquisition of one of the fine ceremonial shields manufactured by the tribes of this area. Similar to those brought out of the Sepik River Valley by Herr Muller, and which I have been shown in Hamburg, they are known as tamburans, or kwoi, and play a crucial role in the spiritual life of their makers.’ The Purari River proved even more uncomfortable than the Fly, hot and swampy, and obscured most of the time by dense curtains of mist (which reminded Great-grandfather of family holidays on the west coast of Scotland). The small steamer kept going aground, so that they were obliged to get out and make their way along the bank. ‘It is the most unpleasant walking,’ said Great-grandfather, with some understatement. ‘Beset as we are by such hazards as snakes and black leeches which fasten themselves upon the skin and suck blood until they are detached, when festering sores almost invariably ensue. At times we are driven to walk in the river itself, in which there are alligators.’

  However, after a few days of this, they reached more open country, and the foothills of the mountainous interior, beyond which lay huge unexplored tracts of land. They began to climb. Great-grandfather described graphically the long haul through dripping rainforests, and their relief as they reached the summit of the mountain ridge and found beyond a wide and pleasant valley. And here, at last, were the native settlements they had been expecting, the remote and isolated peoples never before encountered by Europeans.

  Great-grandfather was excited and impressed.

  ‘Our first contact with the inhabitants came at midday today. We approached a small settlement of grass-thatched huts and as we did so a detachment of male tribesmen came forward to meet us. They were naked except for a posterior pendant of grass, a marine shell of a half-moon shape suspended from the neck, and ornaments of cassowary and bird-of-paradise plumes in the hair. Their faces were most wonderfully painted and decorated. Observing them to be armed with bows and arrows as well as spears, and indeed, to be about to fire upon us, we shouted and waved, attempting to indicate that our intentions were friendly. As we drew nearer, they lowered their weapons, and began to chatter and exclaim among themselves with much wonder and astonishment. They allowed us to come up to them, whereupon they touched our faces and hair with much amazement, as though they could hardly believe that we were flesh and blood. Our clothes, too, astonished them, and our equipment – they gathered around us, touching and examining, expressing their wonder and surprise with small clicking noises of the tongue. All hostility seemed to have evaporated.

  And then, with great excitement, I perceived the very thing I was so anxious to acquire. A little way apart from the other huts stood a rather larger structure, and there at either side of the entrance were three or four examples of the ceremonial shields, hung upon the walls. We were all struck at once by the power and presence of these objects, and indeed with their not inconsiderable artistic merit. Brilliantly coloured, in red, black and yellow, they have a patterning which is undoubtedly of an anthropomorphic nature. It seems possible that they were originally images of the ancestors, and retain some kind of precious symbolism, the exact nature of which it is hard to ascertain. We expressed our desire to examine the shields more closely, which, with some little reluctance they allowed. Finally I could contain myself no longer, and, with the aid of my interpreter, explained my wish to possess one of the shields, offering in exchange anything they wished in the usual currency of tobacco, beads and cloth.

  This threw them into some confusion: they seemed, while unwilling at first to comply, to feel that they might not refuse, and after more discussion they allowed me to select one of the tamburans. We camped that night in the village and were treated with great ceremony and deference, almost, it seemed, as though we were members of the tribe. In the morning, as we prepared ourselves to continue our journey, the leaders came to us and said farewell with great solemnity, assuring us that we should see them again, and once more wondering at our possessions and asking us to send them such things for their own use. Indeed, it was a strange and touching thing to have witnessed the first contact between a savage people and the representatives of western culture: we went on our way much impressed by the encounter and pleased with our kindly reception, so unlike the naked hostility usually met with among the tribes of New Guinea.’

  It was late. The hall clock chimed twelve. The house was quite quiet now, and the street outside. New Guinea was the other side of the world: Great-grandfather had died nearly forty years ago.

  Clare turned out the light and lay staring at the ceiling for what seemed a long time. She heard the hall clock strike one, and must have fallen asleep soon after because when, later, she woke again her watch said ten past two. In the interval she had dreamed, and for a moment, in a half-awake state, confused the dream for reality. She had got out of bed, she thought, just before, because it seemed to her that the house was in some way disturbed, not by noise but a strange intensity of feeling. Her watch had stopped, and so had the hall clock – indeed the silence, as she went downstairs, was insistent. She stood in the hall for a moment, and as she did so the dining-room door opened – of its own accord it seemed – and there was Great-grandfather, standing by the sideboard looking out of the window. Behind him, the tamburan was propped against the wall. The portrait of Great-grandfather had gone: there was a whitened patch on the wallpaper where it should have been. Great-grandfather looked towards Clare – she noticed what a worried expression he had, and how his beard was yellower at one side than the other (she thought, in a detached way, that this must be something to do with smoking a pipe, and the angle at which he smoked it). He drew the curtain, and now Clare could hear a noise from somewhere outside – shrill, high-pitched chanting or singing – and she saw that the brown people were out there again, lots of them. Great-grandfather looked out at them, and seemed to say something. The dream ended, and Clare, waking abruptly, took several moments to readjust herself, lying in the darkness listening to a car in the street outside, to the wind rattling the window, to the clocks.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The tribe work in their gardens, shelter from the rain, eat, sleep, are born, grow up and die. They talk to the ancestors, and remind them that they await a share of the riches they now enjoy, up there beyond the clouds. The ancestors are benevolent, and will provide.

  ‘You look peaky, my dear,’ said cousin Margaret, having a good breakfast before the journey home. ‘You ought to have a better colour, at your age.’

  Snow dislodged itself from the gutter, and flopped past the kitchen window.

  ‘Plenty of fresh air.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare.

  ‘And lots of sleep. Eight hours at least.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what it is.’

  ‘Well, I must press on.’ Cousin Margaret gathered herself, checked train tickets, purse, gloves. ‘I’ll just pop up and say goodbye to the aunts.’

  On the stairs cousin Margaret and Maureen passed each other, said ‘Good morning’ brightly, and examined one another without turning their heads, eyes slanted sideways. Maureen went out into the street and cousin Margaret could be heard upstairs, whisking round the aunts like an amiable wind, set on a course that allowed for no deflection. She came down, carrying a suitcase that leaked a yard or so of dressing-gown cord.

  ‘Well, goodbye, my dear. We’ll see you in August, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare.

  ‘And I hope Aunt Anne’s c
old clears up.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Oh, of course it will. A day or two in bed …’

  ‘Give my love to Uncle Edwin.’

  ‘Yes. Keep in touch, won’t you? Have a lovely holidays, when they come. I must rush, or I’ll miss the train.’

  Clare, wheeling her bike out of the drive, saw cousin Margaret turn the corner into Banbury Road, a confident figure bundled into coat and hat, bolstered with unswerving convictions that all was well with the world, whatever anyone might say to the contrary. A bus loomed in the grey morning light, and cousin Margaret broke into a trot and vanished, the dressing-gown cord leaving a thin line behind her on the snowy pavement. Clare got on to her bike and headed north.

  She was doing homework in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. It was John Sempebwa.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello. Is this a convenient time to call? I found out something about your shield.’

  She took him into the kitchen. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said John. ‘It is homely.’ He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘An essay on the causes of the Civil War. It’s my history homework.’

  ‘Do you like history?’

  ‘Yes. There’s so much of it, though. To get straight about. What comes when.’

  ‘That’s because you live in a country with a lot to remember.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Clare. ‘Is that a good thing?’

  ‘It must be. New countries look for historians before they look for doctors or tax collectors. Let me tell you what I’ve found out for you.’ He took a notepad out of his pocket. Clare hooked her feet over the rung of her chair and leaned forward a little.

  ‘It’s something called a tamburan, or a kwoi in some parts of New Guinea. It doesn’t have anything to do with fighting – it’s a ceremonial shield. They used to make them and then hang them in a place called the men’s house which each village had, all around the walls.’