Testimonies. Patrick O’Brian

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       PUGH

      That spring my uncle Caley, the lawyer, died: I had not seen him for twenty years and I had never liked him (an angry starched white prig) any more than he liked me, so I was not much affected by his death. However, he died intestate: I was his heir-at-law, and I felt a certain compunction in taking his money – he would so have disliked my having it. He was not a real uncle, but a cousin of the older generation.

      It did not take me long to overcome these scruples. No one else would naturally have benefited: Bernard was two or three degrees farther removed than myself, and although he always cried poverty he ran two cars and hung gee-gaws on his enormous wife until she looked like a Christmas tree. It was not really worth mentioning this; my compunction had vanished before the next post, but I felt that it was creditable in so poor a man to have entertained it so long.

      To resume: my uncle Caley died intestate, and I inherited. The first firm decision that came into my mind was to take Hafod and go and live in it. I would buy it if it was for sale or lease it if it were not, but at all events I would go and live there. I could now. Often, during my stay in the autumn I had said that if I searched a hundred years I should never chance on a place I liked more, and I had reckoned the number of years before I could retire: it was not the effect of first acquaintance or enthusiasm; I had been there long enough to see the disadvantages, but even if they had been doubled or trebled I should still have been of the same opinion.

      All through the winter I had thought of the cottage (I used to draw it in idle moments) and the valley and the good Vaughans at the farm. I had sent them a Christmas card, and I had intended to send the child a present, but I left it too late and could find nothing suitable.

      But now I could go there: the faint, ultimately-to-be-realized-perhaps dreams with which I had nourished myself in the winter – a garden, drainage, a bathroom – took on an immediate concrete reality. That was my one basic decision. A great many other things occurred to me, minor things; I was tempted by books, a piano and a car. I hesitated a long time over the car, and I believe that I would have bought it, if I had known how to drive.

      It was not really such a great deal of money; but up to that time I had never had a hundred pounds, clear, unmortgaged and expendable, in my hands at one time, so a sum of thousands appeared a great deal to me. The solicitor who acted for me referred to it as This little nest-egg, and showed me how, by careful investment it could be made to produce an income a little larger than that which I earned. He said it would be very useful as extra pocket-money; perhaps he meant it as a joke: it irritated me beyond words.

      For me it was a release. I had spent many happy days in my college, and there were many men I knew and liked in the university. But I was unsuited for my teaching duties; I performed them badly and with a great deal of pain, and to the end I could never stand up to lecture without dying a little private agony. And in recent years some of the men who had come into the college were not of the kind that I could like; they joined with one or two of the older fellows and the bursar to make what old Foley called ‘a corporate platitude and an underbred aggressive commonplace’.

      But with all these strong feelings (and I see that I have painted them rather larger than life), feelings that were profound more than vivid, I found my actual separation from my college much more painful than I had expected. Very painful: not merely twice or three times as painful but hundreds of times. My friends, they were so unexpectedly kind, but even more my – not exactly enemies, but the people to whom I was, in general, little more than civil, came up to me and said the most obliging things, and with a sincerity that I found very moving indeed. It was coals of fire, and often I was heartily ashamed of the feelings that I had entertained and the witticisms that I had made in petto.

      There was a presentation, speeches, and some good wine. They saw me off handsomely. My last sentimental pilgrimage and my last night in my old rooms cost me some hard tears.

      It was not a transient feeling: when I was sitting in the train it seemed to me that the disadvantages of a collegiate life had never been so slight, and never again could I recapture the strength of my dislike for it.

      I had hoped that Wales would compensate me for my sacrifice, but at Ruabon it was raining, and from there a dirty little train crawled spasmodically through cloud and showers, threading its interminable way through the invisible Principality. In the end I missed my station and I had all the difficulty in the world to find a cab that would take me from Llanfair up Cwm Bugail.

      When I reached my own house through the pouring rain it was dark and the fires had not been lighted: a tomb-like smell met me as I opened the door. The old woman from across the valley had either not received my note or had misunderstood it. I went straight to my damp bed and lay there shivering for an hour or two before I drifted off to a haunted sleep. It was a fitting end for a day that had begun with emotional exhaustion and had ended in extreme physical fatigue.

      Things looked much better in the morning. The sun was shining from a brilliant sky and the valley was looking finer than I had ever seen it. From my bed I looked straight out over to the other side, where the ridge of the Saeth sloped up right-handed to fill half my window. By moving a little I could see the peak itself, rising above a wisp of cloud like a veil, still just tinged with pink.

      The valley was full of lambs. Their voices were everywhere, loud and insistent, a hundred different tones; and everywhere the answering ewes, much deeper. I could see the lambs on the other side. So far away they were no more than white flecks, but brilliant white, and never still.

      Quite suddenly I felt active and happy, and I longed to be out. The air smelled wonderful in the garden, and there was a bird of some kind singing away, as I should have sung if I could. The boy from the farm appeared: he lurked about in view for some time and then СКАЧАТЬ