Read Online Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge - Free Book Online Page A

she didn’t prefer him half-seas over: possibly it gave her more of a hold. He’d been shaken far more than was necessary at the circumstances surrounding his father’s death. Though he didn’t confide in me until some months later, I already had my suspicions that matters were other than they seemed. A relative of old Mrs Hardy, a Captain Tuckett, had come to the house the night it happened, and he’d told me that George was in a horrid state earlier in the evening, quivering and blubbing, and rambling on about Punch and Judy of all things. Then, of course, there was the sudden intrusion into the household of Pompey Jones - the duck-boy as Myrtle insisted on calling him - not to mention her own unexplained and astonishing elevation, packed off to boarding school as though she was a daughter of the family.
    Myrtle was now indispensable. Old Mr Hardy had been a bully and a fraud, and as often happens with sons of such men - sensitive boys, that is - George had feared and admired him in equal proportions. It would not be incorrect to say that George had placed him on a pedestal, and a pretty lofty one at that. Mr Hardy’s topple from the heights had shattered both of them. It was Myrtle’s destiny in life to make George believe he had stuck himself together.
    Several days later, when I was taking a turn about the deck, staring out at the monotonous vista of sea and sky, Naughton joined me and began a footling conversation on the construction of violins; the best wood, etc. He was a manufacturer of the things, with a thriving business, so he boasted, not a stone’s throw from the Custom House. I am not a lover of music, though I once had the luck, during the celebrations surrounding the inauguration of the Albert Dock, to attend a piano recital enlivened by the soloist unexpectedly somersaulting from the platform.
    Naughton was tedious enough when raving on about instruments, but he soon became even more so; he had the temerity to share his thoughts on the coming war. His ignorance of history was infuriating and his judgements worthless. It was his opinion that our affairs were in the right hands.
    ‘By that,’ I said, ‘I presume you mean those buffoons who, by reasons solely of wealth and title, control both government and army?’
    ‘Buffoons -’ he stuttered.
    ‘Idiots, triflers,’ I elaborated. ‘No national respect for ancient tradition, no adulation of rank, however sincere, can fit an uneducated man for high office.’
    ‘Uneducated?’ he protested. ‘Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Russell, Lord Raglan -’
    ‘The want of educated men,’ I thundered, ‘has been the cause of our miseries in the East. They know next to nothing about the vast empire of the Turks. Our consular service, its members recruited from the aristocracy, live in their palaces as though the Thames flowed outside their windows. Their duties consist of home pursuits - the reviewing of parades, the throwing of garden parties, visits to the opera. They might just as well be living in Buckinghamshire. What reports have they sent on the nature of the climate, the terrain, the produce and resources of the country, the state of the roads?’
    I was fairly shouting now. He looked affronted, which was gratifying. ‘I suppose you have brought with you samples of building materials to show prospective buyers,’ I continued. ‘Brick...stone, etc. There are, as you know, very few roads in the region.’
    ‘I have not,’ he said stiffly.
    ‘Mark my words,’ I said. ‘There’ll be a great call for bricks...none at all for violins...unless, perhaps, you intend Sebastopol to fall to the sounds of music.’
    I had thought I’d put him in his place and he’d stalk off and leave me in peace. Not so; he stuck to my side like a burr. It’s uncomfortable, being paced by a man one’s insulted. Just as I was almost reduced to commenting on the waves and the clouds, their particular bounce and shade of colour, etc., he said, ‘Dr