The Transit of Venus Page 2

  "Mustard, Mr. Tice?" Professor Thrale was thinking it was downright fashionable these days to be a poor boy from a grimy town, a clever boy who got himself—the phrase implying contriv-ance this time—to a great university and made his impression there.

  Such persons went forward quickly, having nothing to relinquish; and might well attach themselves, as in this case, to new aspects of astronomy developed from radar techniques of the last war. It all hung together. Sefton Thrale recalled a paper, like a twinge of his illness, on which Ted Tice's precocious achievement was set out against all the odds; where willfulness was not disproved by aberrant undertakings—studies of radiation in postwar Japan, and an intention of spending the coming winter in Paris at work with a controversial physicist.

  Sefton Thrale said to himself that Ted Tice would wind up in America: "That is where he will wind up"—a young man's ambition envisaged as a great winch on which abilities might be deftly and profitably coiled.

  "The vegetables," said Mrs. Thrale, "are from our garden."

  Over the braised celery Sefton Thrale indulged a rather reckless distaste for Ted Tice's clothes, curls, and accent, and for the fault in his eye. Tice's future ascendancy could not, like Caro's beauty, be taken on faith: some sign was needed as to whether he would win or fail—both possibilities being manifestly strong in him. Even if he were at last to carry all before him, it was hard to imagine him properly illustrious in age, like the Professor himself. It was hard to foresee that a name like Tice might carry weight, or that a streaked eye could become a distinction.

  In fact Edmund Tice would take his own life before attaining the peak of his achievement. But that would occur in a northern city, and not for many years.

  Sefton Thrale's own important work had been accomplished in youth, before the Great War. Later on he became a public figure by writing a small, lucid book that bridged, or claimed to bridge, a gulf or gap. He had stood with his unbudging foot on the fire-guard and his hand in his pocket, and talked of the future; and had kept this up so long and so publicly that persons of all kinds now recognized him at sight in the Sunday papers—"Still going strong, eh, you have to hand it to him." Unwieldy old geezer in a blazer of black-and-white vertical stripes. The blazer—pulled down at one side by his hand jammed in the pocket, gripping the presumed pipe

  —gave the effect of a sagging, half-timbered house.

  He used outworn idiom: "Lombard Street to a china orange,"

  "All round China to get to Charing Cross"; "The Old Lady"—even

  —"of Threadneedle Street": phrases outdated before his time, which he cultivated and kept going if not alive. Still spoke of Turkey as "the sick man of Europe," though the entire Continent was a casualty ward long since. His sympathies were with the manageable distances of the past rather than the extravagant reach of the future. The future had been something to talk about, one foot safely on the fender.

  It was easy for youth to scent this out and condemn. Less easy to feel for what was human in it, let alone pitiful.

  In the main Professor Thrale was allowed to hold forth, as now, in quick orations that supposed no disagreement. But, if challenged, lost his sure grip on pipe and future. A cloud of confused indignation would then rise from him, like dust from an old book whose covers have been banged together for cleaning. In private matters he had not been clever and had dis-sipated his wife's fortune, like his own potential, in naive invest-ments. A knighthood, now forthcoming, had been long delayed.

  But his name was public, and weighed in a public and political affair such as siting a telescope.

  Ted Tice took mustard. It came out that he had been on holiday these past two weeks, walking in the West Country. He had an interest, furthermore, in prehistoric monuments, and had spent the solstice at an excavation near Avebury Circle. It was not difficult to imagine lofty stones as his companions.

  Mrs. Thrale said they sometimes received, at Peverel, vibrations from the missile base near Stonehenge. Though considerately fired away from the monument, the rockets were not without local danger. A window had once shattered in a guest's bedroom, luckily causing no injury.

  "Ah yes," said Sefton Thrale. "But Paul Ivory carries his luck with him." Plucking the unknown guest out from the glass shards and flourishing him, in order to exclude Ted Tice; and, with this need to impress, offering Tice the advantage. "What news of Paul, by the way? Any news of Paul?"

  Ted Tice was aware that men already hoped for his good opinion. And that, if balked of it, they might try condescension.

  Palliating the Professor's misdemeanour, the three women quickly testified to an absence of news. And Ted Tice perceived that women's indulgence had been indispensable to Sefton Thrale's fame. As was expected of her, Mrs. Thrale made known that Paul Ivory was her godson, who would shortly come to stay. Ted might have heard of plays by Paul Ivory, in university productions; but had not. Well, in any case, a young person of promise who was soon to have a work produced on the London stage.

  "Paul has all the qualities," said Sefton Thrale, and might have been making some contrast.

  "Is he related to the poet?"

  "In fact, the son."

  Ted Tice could hardly know the subtle disturbance generated by his question—love for the Georgian poets being the remnant of Sefton Thrale's best self, which in turn derived, like his best work, from an earlier period. He would bring them in, forgotten or disparaged poets of his youth, with loyal calculation—the poignant quotation, the interviewer asking, "Now who said that?" and Thrale's retort: "A fine poet who died about the time you were born, young man" (the Professor having all the benign and practised public tricks); then the identification—of Bridges, Drinkwa-ter, Shanks, or Humbert Wolfe; Thomas Sturge Moore; even Rupert Brooke on days when dander was up. Or Rex Ivory.

  Mrs. Thrale remarked, "Rex Ivory was not a great poet. But he was a true poet." She felt it was an odd misconception that scientists had no taste for literature: "I have known many examples to the contrary."

  Ted smiled. "I think we're permitted to be musical."

  On occasion, Caroline Bell's eyes were as kind as her sister's.

  "They are also supposed to be taciturn."

  "I may grow less articulate as I get older."

  Charmian Thrale pointed out a photograph above the sideboard.

  Three young men in a garden, two of them seated in cane chairs, one standing with hands raised and spread. The standing figure, in open shirt and white trousers, declaimed to the others, who were conventionally dressed in their clothes of 1913. Heads of pale hair were helmets, were crowns or halos. A larger nimbus arched the garden, where trees were massed above larkspur and a long lawn was methodically streaked with rolling. It seemed to be near dusk.

  And the magical youths on the grass were doomed by coming war, even the survivors.

  Charmian Thrale said, "Like an eve in a sinless world."

  The remnant of the Sefton Thrale seated in that sinless photograph would have wished to make fellowship with Edmund Tice because of his improbable inquiry. Again the women knew it, and sighed in their thoughts over the old man's curt answer: "In fact, the son."

  The Professor proceeded to elaborate his preference, deftly aligning fork and knife. "Paul Ivory has already established some place for himself in literature. And is rising so swiftly that there is no telling where he may yet go."

  Ted Tice grinned, by no means defenceless. "Like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Impossible to measure speed and position simultaneously."

  It seemed that Caroline Bell could giggle like other girls.

  "And is all but engaged"—the Professor was determined to prevail—"to the daughter of our neighbour at the castle."

  Ted wondered what "all but engaged" might mean, and saw Caro smile with the selfsame thought. Whatever heresy had existed in this house had come from upper servants.

  He recalled the castle, its grey walls discouraging even to lichens.

  Seeing into their souls, the Professor
told them, "It's a brave man these days who'll marry the daughter of a lord. With all you radicals around." This was meant for Ted and Caro, since Grace's way of quietly stacking plates exonerated her. Yet it was Grace who looked up and said, "Perhaps he loves her."

  "Perfectly right. Young people should follow their fancy. Why not? Caro here would marry a mechanic if she was so minded."

  They looked at Caro, who said, "I am not mechanically minded."

  Sefton Thrale always felt worsted when there was laughter.

  The girl went on, "Jt's true. I'm not only ignorant but have no affinity for mechanical things. Or for science either."

  "You owe your existence to astronomy, young woman." Young man, young woman; yet they could not say, old man, old woman.

  The Professor was preparing to explain, when Caro said, "Do you mean, the transit of Venus?"

  It was not the first time she had spoiled things.

  He continued as if she had neither spoiled nor spoken. "Why did James Cook set sail in H.M.S. Endeavour for undiscovered Australia if not to observe, en route, at Tahiti, the planet Venus as it crossed the face of the sun on the third of June 1769 and thus to determine the distance of earth from sun?" He was teaching them a lesson.

  Again they looked at Caro, established as a child of Venus.

  Tice said, "The calculations were hopelessly out." Siding with the girl. "Calculations about Venus often are."

  Sefton Thrale said, "There were distortions in the disc of Venus.

  A phenomenon of irradiation in the transit." It might have been his own expedition, or experience, he defended. "We call it the Black Drop."

  The girl marvelled. "The years of preparation. And then, from one hour to the next, all over."

  The young man explained that there were stages. He said,

  "There are the contacts, and the culmination."

  They both blushed for the universe.

  Professor Thrale said, "Now you are speaking of eclipse. Venus cannot blot out the sun." He flicked crumbs from his cuff. One could not relate in the presence of two virgins how, at Tahiti on that blazing day of June 1769, Venus had been busy in other matters.

  While their officers were engrossed with James Short's telescopes, the crew of the Endeavour had broken into the stores at Fort Venus to steal a heap of iron spike-nails—with which they procured for themselves the passing favours of Tahitian women; and the permanent infection of a venereal disease no subsequent floggings could cure.

  Ted Tice said, "Another astronomer crossed the world to see that same transit, and was defeated." The inward tone in which men speak, casually, of what moves them. Tice could not teach a lesson, but would pay tribute. "A Frenchman had travelled to India years before to observe a previous transit, and was delayed on the way by wars and misadventure. Having lost his original opportunity, he waited eight years in the East for that next transit, of 1769. When the day came, the visibility was freakishly poor, there was nothing to be seen. There would not be another such transit for a century."

  He was telling this to, and for, Caroline Bell. At that moment he and she might have been the elders at the table, elegiac. She said,

  "Years for Venus."

  "His story has such nobility you can scarcely call it unsuccessful."

  Ted Tice was honouring the faith, not the failure.

  Professor Thrale had had enough of this. "And the poor devil returned to France, as I recall, to find himself declared dead in his absence, and his property dispersed." If that wasn't failure, nothing was.

  The girl asked Ted Tice: "What was his name?"

  "Legentil. Guillaume Legentil."

  Mrs. Thrale had made custard. A mottled Irish maid brought dishes on a tray. Mrs. Thrale had been brought up to believe, on pain of losing her character, that her back must never touch the chair: never, never. This added to her air of endurance, and made it seem also that she looked you in the face more than is usual. It was she who had thought of the summer seaside in regard to the quality of Ted Tice—the speckled mirror dangling among the tags for deck-chairs and the keys for bath-houses, all vibrant with a warm padding of sandy feet. On the other hand, there were his nights spent among primitive stones.

  Charmian Thrale's own reclusive self, by now quite free of yearn-ings, merely cherished a few pure secrets—she had once pulled a potato from a boiling pot because it showed a living sprout; and had turned back, on her way to an imperative appointment, to look up a line of Meredith. She did not choose to have many thoughts her husband could not divine, for fear she might come to despise him.

  Listening had been a large measure of her life: she listened closely

  —and, since people are accustomed to being half-heard, her attention troubled them, they felt the inadequacy of what they said. In this way she had a quieting effect on those about her, and stemmed gently the world's flow of unconsidered speech. Although she offered few opinions, her views were known in a way that is not true of persons who, continually passing judgment, keep none in reserve.

  The girls' curved necks were intolerably exposed as they spooned their custard: you could practically feel the axe. Upright Mrs. Thrale could never be felled in the same way, at least not now.

  The young man and the girls remarked among themselves on the delayed season—"the late summer," as if it were already dead.

  They were like travellers managing an unfamiliar tongue, speaking in infinitives. Everything had the threat and promise of meaning.

  Later on, there would be more and more memories, less and less memorable. It would take a bombshell, later, to clear the mental space for such a scene as this.

  Experience was banked up around the room, a huge wave about to break.

  While the girls were clearing the table, the Professor led the young man to the windows, saying, "Let me show you." A rub of his dry, decisive hand on the damp glass only increased the blur, and he turned away, sulky: "Well, you cannot see it now." Not saying what new lesson would be taught on this blackboard.

  Ted Tice knew it was the road he had come.

  In the previous year Christian Thrale, who was then in his twenties, unexpectedly had an evening free from weekend work at a government office. In retrospect it seemed to have been an evening free, also, of himself. He did not often go alone to a concert or anything else of the cultural kind. On your own, you were at the mercy of your responses. Accompanied, on the other hand, you remained in control, made assertive sighs and imposed hypothetical requirements. You could also deliver your opinion, seldom quite favourable, while walking home.

  As to pleasure, he was suspicious of anything that relieved his feelings.

  The concert, on that particular evening, was furthermore too easy to get into. Yet, passing in light rain, he saw posters and bought a seat on the aisle.

  He was scarcely in place when he had to stand again to let two women into the row. He lifted the folded mackintosh, the hat, and damp umbrella he had dumped on the empty seat alongside; and the younger woman, having stood back for the elder, now sat there.

  He had noticed her large-eyed good looks at once when she glanced up saying Sorry. But as the struggling out of coats went on, and the drawing off of stubborn gloves, he lost interest.

  It was the other woman he next became aware of.

  The older woman was small and dark and wore a red felt circlet on her head, trimmed with navy ribbon. Around her shoulders there was looped a swag of sharp little furs—the mouth of one fur fastened, peglike and with needle teeth, on the paw of the other.

  In her lap a handbag was crammed squat, and she dried this with rustling paper. That she was in some way related to the girl, though not of an age to be her mother, was evident from their manner together.

  It was hard to summarize, even in guesses, even in his mind, the relation of girl to woman. Until, as the musicians started to appear and more arrivals pushed along the rows, the phrase came to him: she is in her power.

  The older woman had been coaxed for an outing, in the
desperation of an interminable Sunday. That she expected nothing of the music was apparent from her turning this way and that, providing her own discordant tuning-up. "How people rig themselves out, will you just look at that one. I ask you." "They might've done the place up a bit by now. Wouldn't you think. They mean to use the war as an excuse forever." The girl sat quietly, an evasion she would not be allowed to get away with.

  "You're cheery I must say. First you tell me I'm depressed, and then you don't have a solitary word to say for yourself."

  Now that he knew the association was founded in fear, he still wondered whether they were cousins, perhaps, or aunt and niece.

  When she turned his way, the wide, high slope of the little woman's bright cheeks recalled the girl's.

  "Not a breath of air in here." She flapped the furs on her breast, and the pronged fox-face snapped up and down. "That's the way you catch things. Remind me to gargle when we get home."

  The lights lowered. Throughout the first work Christian was aware of the woman simmering there, a boiling turned low. The girl between them was impassive, hands lightly clasped, slim knees aligned under dark skirt. At the interval the little woman, murmuring to the girl, got up and went out to the ladies'.

  She was no sooner down the aisle than Christian spoke. He had never done such a thing in life, but knew there was no time to lose.

  They got swiftly through some piffle about Sibelius, and by the time the duenna returned Christian had written a phone number and suggested Saturday. All this, which should have seemed extraordinary to him, appeared inevitable and entirely right.

  He got to his feet, and Grace said, "Dora, this is Mr. Thrale."

  He saw Dora's face flash with the realization they had stolen a march on her, and with an impulse to spoil things. Dora saw a sandy man, quite tall, who could easily present a threat. Christian had discovered they were half-sisters and from Australia. When the concert was over, he put them in a cab.