‘Do you think we shall ever have any?’ Mrs Viveash asked.
‘One can never tell.’
‘I should have thought one could,’ said Mrs Viveash. Children – that would be the most desperate experiment of all. The most desperate, and perhaps the only one having any chance of being successful. History recorded cases . . . On the other hand, it recorded other cases that proved the opposite. She had often thought of this experiment. There were so many obvious reasons for not making it. But some day, perhaps – she always put it off, like that.
The cab had turned off the main road into quieter and darker streets.
‘Where are we now?’ asked Mrs Viveash.
‘Penetrating into Maida Vale. We shall soon be there. Poor old Shearwater!’ He laughed. Other people in love were always absurd.
‘Shall we find him in, I wonder?’ It would be fun to see Shearwater again. She liked to hear him talking, learnedly, and like a child. But when the child is six feet high and three feet wide and two feet thick, when it tries to plunge head first into your life – then, really, no . . . ‘But what did you want with me?’ he had asked. ‘Just to look at you,’ she answered. Just to look; that was all. Music hall, not boudoir.
‘Here we are.’ Gumbril got out and rang the second floor bell.
The door was opened by a impertinent-looking little maid.
‘Mr Shearwater’s at the lavatory,’ she said, in answer to Gumbril’s question.
‘Laboratory?’ he suggested.
‘At the ’ospital.’ That made it clear.
‘And is Mrs Shearwater at home?’ he asked maliciously.
The little maid shook her head. ‘I expected ’er, but she didn’t come back to dinner.’
‘Would you mind giving her a message when she does come in,’ said Gumbril. ‘Tell her that Mr Toto was very sorry he hadn’t time to speak to her when he saw her this evening in Pimlico.’
‘Mr who?’
‘Mr Toto.’
‘Mr Toto is sorry ’e ’adn’t the time to speak to Mrs Shearwater when ’e saw ’er in Pimlico this evening. Very well, sir.’
‘You won’t forget?’ said Gumbril.
‘No, I won’t forget.’
He went back to the cab and explained that they had drawn blank once more.
‘I’m rather glad,’ said Mrs Viveash. ‘If we ever did find anybody, it would mean the end of this Last-Ride-Together feeling. And that would be sad. And it’s a lovely night. And really, for the moment, I feel I can do without my lights. Suppose we just drove for a bit now.’
But Gumbril would not allow that. ‘We haven’t had enough to eat yet,’ he said, and he gave the cabman Gumbril Senior’s address.
Gumbril Senior was sitting on his little iron balcony among the dried-out pots that had once held geraniums, smoking his pipe and looking earnestly out into the darkness in front of him. Clustered in the fourteen plane-trees of the square, the starlings were already asleep. There was no sound but the rustling of the leaves. But sometimes, every hour or so, the birds would wake up.
Something – perhaps it might be a stronger gust of wind, perhaps some happy dream of worms, some nightmare of cats simultaneously dreamed by all the flock together – would suddenly rouse them. And then they would all start to talk at once, at the tops of their shrill voices – for perhaps half a minute. Then in an instant they all went to sleep again and there was once more no sound but the rustling of the shaken leaves. At these moments Mr Gumbril would lean forward, would strain his eyes and his ears in the hope of seeing, of hearing something – something significant, explanatory, satisfying. He never did, of course; but that in no way diminished his happiness.
Mr Gumbril received them on his balcony with courtesy.
‘I was just thinking of going in to work,’ he said. ‘And now you come and give me a good excuse for sitting out here a little longer. I’m delighted.’
Gumbril Junior went downstairs to see what he could find in the way of food. While he was gone, his father explained to Mrs Viveash the secrets of the birds. Enthusiastically, his light floss of grey hair floating up and falling again about his head as he pointed and gesticulated, he told her; the great flocks assembled – goodness only knew where! – they flew across the golden sky, detaching here a little troop, there a whole legion, they flew until at last all had found their appointed resting-places and there were no more to fly. He made this nightly flight sound epical, as though it were a migration of peoples, a passage of armies.
‘And it’s my firm belief,’ said Gumbril Senior, adding notes to his epic, ‘that they make use of some sort of telepathy, some kind of direct mind-to-mind communication between themselves. You can’t watch them without coming to that conclusion.’
‘A charming conclusion,’ said Mrs Viveash.
‘It’s a faculty,’ Gumbril Senior went on, ‘we all possess, I believe. All we animals.’ He made a gesture which included himself, Mrs Viveash and the invisible birds among the plane-trees. ‘Why don’t we use it more? You may well ask. For the simple reason, my dear young lady, that half our existence is spent in dealing with things that have no mind – things with which it is impossible to hold telepathic communication. Hence the development of the five sense. I have eyes that preserve me from running into the lamp-post, ears that warn me I’m in the neighbourhood of Niagara. And having made these instruments very efficient, I use them in holding converse with other beings having a mind.
I let my telepathic faculty lie idle, preferring to employ an elaborate and cumbrous arrangement of symbols in order to make my thought known to you through your senses. In certain individuals, however, the faculty is naturally so well-developed – like the musical, or the mathematical, or the chess-playing faculties in other people – that they cannot help entering into direct communication with other minds, whether they want to or not. If we knew a good method of educating and drawing out the latent faculty, most of us could make ourselves moderately efficient telepaths; just as most of us can make ourselves into moderate musicians, chess players and mathematicians.
There would also be a few, no doubt, who could never communicate directly. Just as there are a few who cannot recognize “Rule Britannia” or Bach’s Concerto in D minor for two violins, and a few who cannot comprehend the nature of an algebraical symbol. Look at the general development of the mathematical and musical faculties only within the last two hundred years.
By the twenty-first century, I believe, we shall all be telepaths. Meanwhile, these delightful birds have forestalled us. Not having the wit to invent a language or an expressive pantomime, they contrive to communicate such simple thoughts as they have, directly and instantaneously. They all go to sleep at once, wake at once, say the same thing at once; they turn all at once when they’re flying. Without a leader, without a word of command, they do everything together, in complete unison. Sitting here in the evenings, I sometimes fancy I can feel their thoughts striking against my own. It has happened to me once or twice: that I have known a second before it actually happened, that the birds were going to wake up and begin their half-minute of chatter in the dark. Wait! Hush.’ Gumbril Senior threw back his head, pressed his hand over his mouth, as though by commanding silence on himself he could command it on the whole world. ‘I believe they’re going to wake now. I feel it.’
He was silent. Mrs Viveash looked towards the dark trees and listened. A full minute passed. Then the old gentleman burst out happily laughing.
‘Completely wrong!’ he said. ‘They’ve never been more soundly asleep.’ Mrs Viveash laughed too. ‘Perhaps they all changed their minds, just as they were waking up,’ she suggested.
Gumbril Junior reappeared; glasses clinked as he walked, and there was a little rattle of crockery. He was carrying a tray.
‘Cold beef,’ he said, ‘and salad and a bit of cold apple-pie. It might be worse.’
They drew up chairs to Gumbril Senior’s work-table, and there, among the letters and the unpaid bills and the sketchy elevations of archiducal palaces, they ate the beef and the apple-pie, and drank the one-and-ninepenny vin ordinaire of the house. Gumbril Senior, who had already supped, looked on at them from the balcony.
‘Did I tell you,’ said Gumbril Junior, ‘that we saw Mr Porteous’s son the other evening – very drunk?’
Gumbril Senior threw up his hands. ‘If you knew the calamities that young imbecile has been the cause of!’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Gambled away I don’t know how much borrowed money. And poor Porteous can’t afford anything – even now.’ Mr Gumbril shook his head and clutched and combed his beard. ‘It’s a fearful blow, but of course, Porteous is very steadfast and serene and . . . There!’ Gumbril Senior interrupted himself, holding up his hand. ‘Listen!’
In the fourteen plane-trees the starlings had suddenly woken up.
There was a wild outburst, like a stormy sitting in the Italian Parliament. Then all was silent. Gumbril Senior listened, enchanted. His face, as he turned back towards the light, revealed itself all smiles. His hair seemed to have blown loose of its own accord, from within, so
