On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin

Author:Bruce Chatwin [Chatwin, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781448105625
Publisher: Vintage Books; Random House
Published: 1982-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

26

WHILE WORKING AT Lurkenhope, one of Rosie’s duties had been to carry the bathwater upstairs to Reggie Bickerton’s bedroom.

This place, to which few people were ever admitted, was situated in the West Tower, and was a perfect bachelor’s den. The walls were hung with deep-blue paper. The tapestry curtains and bed-hangings were worked in green with a design of heraldic beasts. There were chintz-covered chairs and ottomans; the carpet was Persian and in front of the fireplace lay a polar-bearskin rug. On the mantelpiece was an ormolu clock, flanked with figures of Castor and Pollux. Most of the paintings were of oriental subjects, bazaars, mosques, camel caravans and women in latticed rooms. His Eton photographs showed groups of young athletes with imperturbable smiles; and the evening sun filtering through roundels of stained glass, shed flecks of blood-red light over the frames.

Rosie would spread out the bath-mat, drape a towel over a chair, and lay out the soap and sponge. Then, after plunging a thermometer into the water – to be sure of not scalding the young master’s stump – she tried to slip away without his calling her back.

Most evenings, he’d be lying on the ottoman loosely wrapped in a yellow silk dressing-gown, sometimes pretending to read or jotting down notes with his serviceable hand. He watched her every movement from the corner of his eye.

‘Thank you Rosie,’ he’d say, as she turned the door-handle. ‘Er … Er … Rosie!’

‘Yes, sir!’ She would stand, almost to attention, with the door half-open.

‘No! Forget it! It’s of no importance!’ – and, as the door closed behind her, he would reach for his crutch.

One evening, stripped to the waist, he asked her to help him into the water.

‘I can’t,’ she gasped, and rushed for the safety of the passage.

In 1914, Reggie had gone to war with a head full of chivalric notions of duty to caste and country. He had come home a cripple, with a receding hairline, three fingers missing from his right hand, and the watery eyes of a secret drinker. At first, he made light of his injuries with upper-class stoicism. By 1919, the first wave of sympathy had worn off, and he had become ‘a case’.

His fiancée had married his best friend. Other friends found the Welsh Border too far from London for frequent visits. His favourite sister, Isobel, had married and gone to India. And he was left in this huge gloomy house, alone with his squabbling parents and the sad, stuttering Nancy, who showered him with unwanted affection.

He tried his hand at writing a novel about his wartime experiences. The strain of composition tired him: after twenty minutes of left-handed scribbling, he would be staring out of the window – at the lawn, the rain and the hill. He longed to live in a tropical country and he longed for a tumbler of whisky.

One May weekend, the house was full of guests and Rosie was mouthing her supper in the Servant’s Hall, when the bell of Bedroom Three began to ring: she had already seen to his bathwater.

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