Long Way Up, Short Way Down

He was carried in Burke's and Who's Who as Colonel Sir Albert Charles Lancehugh, Bart., C. B. E., D. S. O., D. F. C., and he preferred that close friends call him Charlie. There were not many of the old crowd in his circle now; indeed, only one or two of those who would sometimes put a "Cheerful" before the Charlie, usually at Boodle's or some such place, and late at night. It was a reference to an old R. A. F. joke. Charles Lancehugh had been a bomber pilot in Lancasters in the Hitler War. Indeed, his name had been on the roster of 617 Squadron, he had been of the select company that had breached the Möhne and the Eder dams. He had known Hughie Edwards and Mickey Martin and he had more than once seen Guy Gibson plain; (continued on page 112)Long Way Up(continued from page 107) indeed, he had eaten and drunk and flown with him.

Lancehugh didn't often think of the years of the War. His mind didn't run that way; he was not of a reminiscent nature. His conscience hurt, too. Guy Gibson, now, probably the greatest bomber pilot who ever flew, did not live to see the end of it, while he, Charles Lancehugh, not only had survived the War but never had had a scratch in it. It was held an actuarial impossibility significantly to exceed 90 bomber missions, but Lancehugh had done 108 when they took him off ops. He had once brought a Lancaster back from Bremen holed in 117 places, and he the only man in her not dead or dying. A ground crewman said the plane looked like a slaughter-house in which the animals had been winning.

Lancehugh knew, too, that he had been instrumental in the killing of many thousands of people, most of them old men, women and children, the bombers' inevitable victims in that War, and the maiming of many more. He did not accept the ultimate responsibility, arguing half seriously that it properly went to the bomb aimer. Still, it was he who had brought the bomb aimer over the rooftops and had held him there while he did his deadly work--for these deeds, Lancehugh sometimes thought, They, or He, or Whoever, might exact retribution; but if such were the cosmic intention, it was slow in coming. The prospect, if it were a prospect, caused Lancehugh small concern. He was not an introspective man. He didn't often worry. He knew the old-fashioned kind of security: One had been in the right places all one's life, in the company of the right people; one had done the things properly expected of one and, of course, one had enough money, one was quite beyond any possibility of financial embarrassment. Security is the absence of the other thing, and there was nothing in life of which Charles Lancehugh was afraid. And beyond, certainly nothing. And not death. The manner of it, well, possibly, possibly. The idea of combined age, pain and helplessness did not enchant him. Whom does it enchant? He was reminded of a harsh gray day in officers' training, a howler out of the southeast flinging rain like broken glass, a bayonet instructor screaming, Give it to them in the belly, lads, they don't like the cold steel in the belly and somebody in the rear rank shouting, Who does, you? and the sergeant, raging, Who said that? Who said that?

So, wrapped in small thoughts, Charles Lancehugh walked across Green Park. It was his favorite park, as civilized a place, he considered, as was to be found in the most civilized of cities. He had been making for the In and Out club, but it was a fine bright day, and at the last moment, he decided he would walk along Piccadilly to Scott's instead. He spun slowly through 90 degrees on one heel and set off, looking not quite what he was. He was lean and moved well; he had an air about him, an elegance. Wyser & Bryant cut his suits--formed waist, slanted pockets, slit and cuffless trousers, a mode one would have thought meant for a man 20 years younger. He wore his bowler in the manner of a Guardsman, tipped in front.

It was still early when he came to Scott's, not 12:15. He took a table in the Window Room and asked for a pint of Taittinger. Four others had been seated, all men. Two of them, together, had something to do with films, Lancehugh decided. The others were by themselves and could have been anything. He thought they looked dull, and chided himself for it. How could one know? Among the biggest bores he could remember, Lancehugh had to place Sir Peter Bellair, extraordinary-looking fellow--six-six, red beard halfway to his belt, bright-blue eyes, and an idiot. Or take Tony Bronson. Tony Bronson had been made a K. B. E. for unspecified work in the Foreign Office. In fact, Lancehugh knew, he had been a disposal man for M-6. He was a government assassin, in plain terms. He looked like a teacher in a third-rate public school and he was absolutely fascinating. Lancehugh took a sip of champagne. It was good, and cold as iron. Lifting the glass had pointed his eyes toward the door. A girl stood there, talking with the maître d'hôtel. A brown haze seemed to float around her: brown-gold hair, tanned, a wheat-color suit of some sort. But too young to be interesting. Lancehugh picked up the menu. He had decided he was going to have a hell of a big lunch, and he was ordering it when he was called to the telephone. It was a short conversation and he felt sadly resigned when he hung up, trying to tell himself that he'd known all along he should have gone to the In and Out. He explained the situation to the maître d'hôtel and the man led him to the girl's table.

"Mademoiselle Faucon?" the maître d'hôtel said.

The girl nodded.

"May I present to you Colonel Sir Albert Charles Lancehugh?"

Lancehugh took over. "Mademoiselle," he said. "I believe you have a luncheon date with Mrs. William Marchant. Mrs. Marchant is my sister. She is, I'm sorry to say, indisposed. She called the restaurant to apologize to you. She was told that I was in the house . . . so, you see . . . may I express my sister's regrets and ask you to join me for luncheon?"

"I am so sorry to hear this," Mlle. Faucon said. "It is nothing too serious?"

"Debby broke an ankle. I'm afraid," Lancehugh said.

"What a pity," Mlle. Faucon said. "I am sorry. You are sure it is no trouble, if I have lunch with you?"

"It would be a great pleasure for me," Lancehugh said. An hour will do it, he thought. Stuff a chop and a salad into her, a sweet, and au revoir.

Mlle. Faucon had sherry, a small tureen of crème portugaise, sole véronique, leaf spinach, a serving of salade niçoise and a big cut of camembert. With coffee she took calvados. She ate deftly and quickly. Occasional Gallicisms aside, her English was flawless. She was not more than pretty, Lancehugh thought, but she had a notably bright and lively air. She made a remarkable impression of interest in what one was saying, and by the time the first hour had passed, he had begun to admire her rather warmly. This admiration was rooted in something she had not said. The girl was in London, his sister had told him, on invitation of friends who wanted to help her over the deaths of her mother and father, ten days since, in a motorcar accident. They had rolled off a lacet in the Maritimes. To make not the slightest reference to this bereavement was, in his view, wholly admirable; it reflected courage and taste remarkable in one so young. Well, she might be 29. Even so, even so.

When she smiled, her whole face went with it and her eyes came down to slits. Sometimes she turned her head when she listened, rather like a bird, and her eyes did this narrowing thing; she might hold her chin on the end of two fingers. She had strong-looking hands, lean and brown, like the rest of her. She had a mannequin's build: long legs, small hard little breasts, swanny-looking neck.

"I shall be in London for another six days," she said. "Then I must go back to Paris. I must work. I miss working. I suppose everyone does."

"I don't," Lancehugh said. "Not a bit. What an idea, miss working!"

"Do you work?"

"Yes. I do. But at different things, and when I want to. I never miss not doing it."

"I miss it."

"What do you do? What is your work?"

"I am an anesthesiologist," she said.

"Really? You mean, you give the anesthetic, in surgery? You're a doctor?"

She laughed. "I am. I'm on the staff of a hospital and all. You're surprised."

"I am, at that."

"You don't think it is work for a woman?"

"I shouldn't say that. It just doesn't seem, well, very demanding, very interesting, giving people ether. . . ."

"Ether!" She crinkled up and laughed again. "What is ether? I can't remember (continued on page 234)Long Way Up(continued from page 112) the last time I gave anyone ether. We have twenty things better than ether today. As for demanding . . . eh bein, one takes a patient through consciousness, centimeter by centimeter, layer by layer, to the edge of death, one balances him there, one brings him back, centimeter by centimeter . . . sometimes one is six hours doing this, it is demanding, as you say, enough for me. For me, it is enough."

"I hadn't thought of it in that way," Lancehugh said. "The last time I saw an operation, the anesthetic was chloroform. I doubt the fellow giving it could have spelled the word, I know he couldn't pronounce it, and I've always thought he used far too much of it. Patient died, anyway."

"Chloroform is very crude, it is primitive." Mlle. Faucon said.

"I'm sure it is," Lancehugh said. "Tell me, where are you staying?"

"Elvaston Place," she said. He had the cab drop them at the Alexandra Gate and they walked the rest of the way, past the Albert Memorial. Louise Faucon had never seen it. She was enchanted.

"How Victoria must have loved him!" she said. "Look at all this. Little bits here, little pieces here, all done with love, she has given him everything but diamonds in his eyes!"

"But it's so ugly," Lancehugh said.

"Only in the way it looks," Louise said. "In what it means, in what went into it, it's as beautiful as can be."

"You may be right," Lancehugh said.

She thanked him for lunch and, without quite knowing he was going to do it, Lancehugh asked her to go to the theater the next night. She said she would.

• • •

He was at some pains over the play. He told his broker it should be of a certain intellectual content, and so he found himself seeing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, not really his sort of thing. He didn't mind it, though. A good enough play, he thought, and damned well done. Louise was delighted. Afterward, they went to Mirabelle. Louise tucked away a huge dinner; she ate much more than he did, and quicker, and drank as much wine.

"You do like food, don't you?" he said.

"I like everything," she said. "Forgive the cliché, but one lives once, isn't that so?"

"True enough," he said.

"You look like one who has done most things." Louise said. "You have loved living, isn't that so, and you still do?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Charles said. "But life is all peaks and valleys, isn't it, and one cannot stay forever on a peak. One can stay a long time, if one's lucky, but one must come down eventually, and things are never the same afterward, after one's come down. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes, I think so. You mean the man's thing, the life-risk thing. You were in the War?"

He told her. "Usually," he said, "we'd take off in the early evening, I remember many times at sunset, and looking down on England--this is a beautiful country, you know, it really is--and knowing what the next eight or ten hours were sure to bring, one would hate doing it, and yet, supposing one lost an engine or something of the sort and had to abort, one wasn't glad, it was a terrible disappointment, and I'm sure that duty, patriotism, esprit de corps were not driving one, really. I remember many times thinking one had to be mad, to wish to go, flying a blacked-out aircraft in a black sky, other aircraft jostling all around, dozens of them, hundreds, sometimes, night fighters hanging about outside, it was rather like flying through a pudding, the air nearly solid, with kites, with bombs, with the stuff coming up from the ground, lovely-looking lights floating up, yellow, blue, purple, hot steel anyway, all of it, and below on the ground, the red and green markers the pathfinders had put down, and the white pin points all over the target, incendiaries hitting, and perhaps right next to one, a bomber burning like a torch . . . across the river, in Lambeth, we have a museum. Imperial War Museum, they've saved the fuselage of a heavy, the navigator's maps are there on his desk, just as he left them, and this is a well-used aircraft, dented, paint scuffed off her, throttle knobs smooth and worn . . . when I pushed my head inside her, three or four years ago, would you believe I began to tremble? I was ashamed. Astonished, too, almost stunned."

"It was not to be ashamed of," Louise said. "It was normal, that."

"I never flew a plane after 1946." Charles Lancehugh said. "Same thing is true of lots of fellows I knew. It's not that we were fed up with it, as one hears sometimes. Chaps tell people that, I think, because they don't want to admit the other thing, the one real thing."

"There is no one real thing, as you put it," Louise said. "There are many. You think you have known only one. We all think that."

"Do you?"

"Certainly. For me, it comes when I look down on a patient and know his life is utterly in my hands: I hear his heart. I see it on the oscillograph, my hands are on the valves, it is I who will say how much oxygen he shall have, how much cyclopropane, how much this or that, a word from me and the operation must stop instantly . . . I can kill him if I want to. I can save him if I want to. This is exactly how it was with you, bombing in the War, there you were, looking down on all those people, some of them you were going to kill, some of them you were going to let live. It depended on an imperceptible twist of your hand, didn't it, whether the bombs landed in one street or the next, true?"

"But it isn't the same thing at all, not at all! You're a doctor, your whole business is to preserve life; mine was to take life. Not the same thing at all."

"Wrong, my dear. Exactly the same thing. The bomber is the surgeon, the surgeon is the bomber, they both operate under the highest license, from state, from church, from everybody. What is more sacred than war? In war, we kill for the highest good, to remove the cancerous growth, so that the rest of the body, the pure, unsullied part of the world, may live in peace and comfort. Both sides, all sides, kill for this pure purpose. It is all the same, you see, and you and I, we are all the same. You think doctors never kill, even out of kindness? You must know better than that." She laughed. "What shall we do now? It is only eleven-thirty. We must amuse ourselves. Why don't we see your sister? We will bring champagne, we will pour some on her cast, too, and we will all laugh."

• • •

The next day was Saturday. He took her to the flea market in Portobello Road. They lunched in a pub. When they came out of the dark, cool place, into the sun, he thought of walking and he drove to Hampstead Heath. Lancehugh liked walking. Sometimes, when he was at the place in Surrey, he would walk half a day without stopping. He was hard and strong. At 50, he still played squash and he could run five miles. He saw that Louise knew how to walk, too. She moved sensibly and they covered ground. They said little. She put her hand in his and went where he took her.

Deborah Marchant's bedroom was in the back of the house. Most of the wall was window, one could see into the garden from anywhere. She was sitting up, propped in a solt chairlike thing covered in white corduroy. She wore a blue ribbon in her hair, there were cornflowers on the table beside her. The plaster cast made a flat-topped bulge in the coverlet. She was drinking black coffee and sherry.

"Betty Harlan tells me she's cross with you." she said.

"Betty Harlan?" Charles said.

"Louise Faucon's friend. It was her idea the girl should come to London. Since which time. Betty says, no one has seen her but you."

"I shouldn't go that far. No one. I've seen a good deal of her, true enough."

"I can't blame you." Deborah said. "She's an attractive little thing. Very French, but still, attractive. Have you been to bed with her?"

"Yes." Charles said.

"I imagine she'd be rewarding in bed," Deborah said.

"She's rewarding in many ways."

"My God, that sounds earnest enough," Deborah said. "I'm surprised; after all, she's nothing like Helen."

"Lot of rot, that idea of yours, one always falls in love with the same kind of woman," Charles said. "Nothing to it. Louise doesn't resemble Helen in the slightest. Doesn't resemble anybody I've ever known."

"My God," Deborah said. "As bad as that. Sure you won't have a sherry?"

"All right," Charles said.

"The girl's brighter than you are."

"I know. On the other hand. I'm much the stronger. She's younger than I am. But I have . . . other resources. We complement each other. And there is something else. I don't know, some central core of likeness in us."

"Has she said anything about her parents?"

"When I asked her. Apparently she had been very close to them and they to each other. Her mother had been senile for years, she was practically helpless, and her father found it hard to bear. As for him, he was seventy-two. Shouldn't have been driving in the Alps, I'd have said. The police think he simply went to sleep at the wheel."

"When is she going back to Paris?"

"Tomorrow. I'm going with her."

• • •

They were married three years later. Those had been three good years. They lived very well together. Lancehugh had been right, they were complementary. They led each other in ever-widening circles. Louise Faucon had a lifelong list of things she wanted to do, and Charles had the means. He wished to indulge her, and in her turn, she wished to make him feel it had been worth doing. She kept on at the hospital for a year, but after that, she and Charles were too busy. There was no time for work. They moved about. They took a villa in the hills above Eze-Plage and a flat in Zurich. They spent part of each summer and each autumn in Surrey. They went to the Greek islands, came back to Paris, locked themselves up with a man from Berlitz for three months and thereafter spoke Greek to each other. Their friends, who had been, most of them. Louise's friends, were amused with them. Charles had not been a success at first. He seemed serious and clearly he was old. Still, it was in his favor that his French was perfect, and he did have a certain chic.

"He grows on one, Charles," they began telling each other. "She may have a good thing there."

They had hall a dozen people to dinner every Wednesday and 20 or 30 always came for cocktails on Fridays. These were people who could get into a civilized fury over an obscure line of Robbe-Grillet's, or whether Paul Reynaud had died happy, or should have died happy, or Simone de Beauvoir's notions about Stalinism. Charles Lance-hugh was faintly surprised to find that he often had opinions on such oddities. He began to enjoy conversation as a recreation. He felt that he was a happy man. Now he liked having people about, the more the better, the noisier the better, the bitterer the arguments the better. Sometimes in London he would go into one of his clubs, say White's, and find himself wondering what he'd ever seen in such a place, ordered, placid, funereal.

They married on impulse and out of perversity; they married because there was no longer any reason they should marry. And they were deeply pleased to discover, as they had hoped to discover, that the act changed nothing. The year after their marriage differed in no essential from the year before it. It was perhaps the best year. They had two more, and a few months, before Charles Lance-hugh died.

• • •

"We came here often, Charles and I," Louise said. "He liked Yugoslavia, and this little beach was our favorite. I have never seen anyone else on it. We always swam here like this, naked."

"I remember," the man said. "I had a letter from him. I think two years ago, telling me I should come here."

"And you did."

"Yes. I had a good deal of respect for Charles' judgment. And he was the only Englishman I ever really liked. He was very gallant. I think that was it with Charles. He was really very gallant."

"Yes. And strong. A rock. Generous. Kind. Many good things."

The man turned on his side, to face her. He tracked one finger absently along her arm.

"I cannot say I wish he hadn't died," he said. "But I miss him."

"I do not." Louise said. "That's why I can talk about him so easily. To miss him, I would have to pretend he didn't want to go. He did. He wanted to go. The night before he died, he said, 'I consider I have had a perfect life. Perfect. Not nearly perfect, but absolutely.' And he said, 'For much of it. and the best of it, I thank you.' You cannot allow yourself to be maudlin over a man like that."

"No." he said. "You cannot."

They watched the gulls, dropping clams on the rocks.

"There was a thing about Charles' death I didn't understand." the man said. "I don't know if you know this, but it is very rare for a man to shoot himself in the heart. A woman, she may, if she uses a gun at all. but a man, particularly a military man, will nearly always shoot himself in the head. It's an odd thing, but true."

"I didn't know that." Louise said.

"I was surprised, we were all surprised, when Charles fell ill. He was, after all, strong, he seemed so well always."

"A characteristic of Hodgkin's disease, that." Louise said. "You see it very often in the strongest people. It seems somehow to seek them out. No one knows why."

"Is it always so quick?"

"Usually. After all, in the lymphatic system, it is easy for it to run through, to metastasize everywhere."

"He was in pain?"

"Yes. Not as bad as in some of the other kinds of cancer, but bad enough. You knew that by looking at him."

"He was fortunate he had you. You were giving him something, injections?"

"Yes. Morphine. As much as he wanted."

The man sighed, staring out to sea.

"I think you took a chance, with the gun." he said. "After all, he could have given an overdose of morphine to himself, he had everything he needed. It would have been easy to believe that. You could have left the syringe in his hand. No one would have dreamed of wondering about you."

Louise said nothing.

"If you ever find it necessary to shoot me, after I am full of morphine, and dead, please shoot me in the head. I shall feel easier. I shouldn't want to worry about your getting into trouble over it. Remember, I am left-handed. That's important, too."

"You have a great flair for detail," Louise said.

"Also remember that I don't like height. I don't want to fall asleep and drive off any mountain. I might wake up on the way down, and that would distress me."

Louise turned on her side, to face him. She hooked a heel around his ankle.

"What has made you think of all this, my dear?" she said.

"Oh, it occurred to me that people who are older sometimes don't fare so well with you. People who are older, and who love you."

"You are quite wrong. They fare very well, indeed. Have you forgotten what I told you Charles said to me, the night before he died?"

"That he had had a good life?"

"Yes. Had."

"I cannot, somehow, imagine myself saying that."

"You are young."

"I'm four years, seven months, nineteen days older than you."

"Then, my ancient one, you should know that to love is to cherish, to comfort, to give, to give anything that is wanted. Anything."

"I love you," he said. "I think I always have. I would give you anything."

She ran her hands down his belly and held him lightly.

"And I you," she said. "Anything. And now that we know what we are talking about, shall we stop talking about it and thinking about it? Shall we?"

He looked into her eyes, and laughed, and reached both arms for her.

"Why not?" he said.